HELLO Y'ALL! I REOPENED MY AO3 ACCOUNT! I'LL BE POSTING MY STORIES THERE INSTEAD! SEE YOU THERE!
https://archiveofourown.org/users/HanEspiritu
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@hanespiritu
HELLO Y'ALL! I REOPENED MY AO3 ACCOUNT! I'LL BE POSTING MY STORIES THERE INSTEAD! SEE YOU THERE!
https://archiveofourown.org/users/HanEspiritu
Won't be here on Tumblr for a while(by a while I mean probably years) since I'll be on AO3 now LMAO
Something Like Yellow
a continuation — Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
The first one appeared on a Monday.
Nakamura arrived at seven forty — earlier than usual, because Matsumura had texted the night before asking what chapter of the marine life book he'd gotten to, and they'd ended up talking until past midnight about bioluminescence, and he'd overslept and had to rush, and somehow still arrived early, which said something about the state of his life that he didn't want to examine —
And there it was.
On his desk.
A single daffodil. Yellow as the inside of a dream. Stem wrapped neatly at the base with a small strip of paper, no tape, just folded. No note. No name. Just the flower, placed precisely in the center of the desk, like someone had thought about where to put it.
Nakamura stood at the classroom door and looked at it.
The classroom was mostly empty. Two students near the window, not paying attention. Morning light coming in flat and grey.
He walked to his desk. Sat down. Picked up the daffodil and held it and felt, in the back of his chest, the very specific sensation of someone opening a window in a room you'd forgotten had windows.
He set it down beside his pencil case.
He didn't say anything about it.
---
On Tuesday there were two.
On Wednesday, one again but with a shorter stem, like whoever had cut it had been working with what they had.
By Thursday the classroom had noticed.
"Okay so," Mukai said, materializing beside Kawamura during the break between classes with the energy of someone who had been holding this in for twenty minutes. "The flowers."
Kawamura was already looking at Nakamura's desk from across the room. The daffodil sat beside his notebook, which he was writing in with great focus and the carefully neutral expression of someone who was absolutely thinking about the flower.
"The flowers," she confirmed.
"Who do we think."
They both looked, with the synchronized instinct of people who had been watching this situation for weeks, at Hirose.
Hirose was at his desk talking to Mukai's other classmate about something, laughing, entirely normally. He glanced over — caught them looking — and raised his eyebrows in a what expression.
"Nothing," Mukai called.
Hirose frowned slightly and went back to his conversation.
"It's him," Mukai said under his breath. "It has to be."
Kawamura said nothing. She was still watching Nakamura's desk. Watching Nakamura's hand, which had moved, unconsciously, to rest near the daffodil without touching it. Just near.
"Maybe," she said.
"Who else would it be."
She thought about a bookstore. About a conversation Nakamura had come back from looking lighter and slightly confused about the lightness, the way people look when something has happened to them that they haven't named yet.
"Maybe," she said again.
---
By Friday the classroom had developed opinions.
The opinions were not subtle.
"It's definitely Hirose," someone said, loudly enough, during lunch.
Hirose looked up from his food.
"The flowers on Nakamura's desk," the someone clarified, with the cheerful destructiveness of a person who had decided this was an interesting situation and wanted to see what happened when you poked it.
Hirose blinked.
Nakamura, three seats away, had gone very still.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Hirose said.
"Come on. Yellow daffodils. Every day this week. You're not even going to—"
"I said I don't know what you're talking about." Hirose's voice was perfectly even. He picked up his chopsticks. "Someone probably left them by mistake."
"Every day?"
"People are forgetful."
"Hirose—"
"Are you going to eat that?" he asked, pointing at the person's bread roll with his chopsticks. "Because if you're just going to talk, someone should eat it."
The conversation died. Mostly. The murmuring didn't, but it moved elsewhere, the way murmuring does.
Nakamura looked at Hirose.
Hirose was eating with great concentration, eyes on his tray, the specific focused neutrality of someone who was declining to be looked at.
Nakamura turned back to his own lunch.
Kawamura, beside him, said nothing. But under the table she found his hand briefly and pressed it once, and he pressed back, and that was enough.
---
Hirose was not the one putting daffodils on Nakamura's desk.
He wished he had thought of it.
He'd spent Friday afternoon sitting on the train home holding that wish in his chest, turning it over, examining the specific texture of his annoyance — because it was annoyance, he was clear on that, that sharp and slightly miserable feeling of watching someone else do the thing you should have done — and trying to figure out if it was Matsumura.
It was Matsumura.
He knew it was Matsumura. He couldn't prove it. There was no evidence, and Matsumura had a perfectly constructed alibi of simply not going to Minami High in the mornings — except he did, Hirose knew he did, he went for the coffee — but there was no proof, and accusing someone of leaving flowers was not a sentence Hirose was prepared to say out loud.
He texted instead.
The daffodils.
Matsumura's response came in four minutes: what about them
You know what about them.
I genuinely don't know what you're referring to, Hirose.
Matsumura.
I'm in class right now, this is very rude of you.
You're not in class, your school day ends at three and it's four thirty.
A pause.
I'm in class spiritually.
Hirose stared at his phone.
It's you, he typed.
Hirose I don't know what you're talking about. Is everything okay? You seem stressed. Have you been sleeping.
Hirose put his phone face-down on his bed and looked at the ceiling.
He stayed like that for a while.
Then he sat up, went to his desk, and opened his laptop, and looked up, feeling slightly ridiculous, the meaning of yellow daffodils.
He read it.
Read it again.
Sat back in his chair.
Longing, he thought. Unrequited. I have been holding this for a long time.
He thought about Matsumura, who had walked forty minutes on Saturdays, who had shown up at an aquarium with no good reason, who had learned the coffee order and the right questions and the specific frequency that made Nakamura laugh without catching himself first.
He thought about himself, who had had a front row seat for years and looked at his phone during the show.
The ceiling offered nothing useful.
He picked up his phone again and typed: you should have told me.
This time the response took longer. Nearly ten minutes. When it came, it was shorter than expected.
Would it have changed anything?
Hirose looked at those five words for a long time.
He didn't answer.
Because the honest answer — the one that lived underneath the comfortable story he'd been telling himself about being someone who liked girls, who didn't notice certain things, who hadn't spent the last month watching someone across a classroom with an ache he kept mislabeling — was something he wasn't ready to send over text.
Maybe wasn't ready to send at all.
He put the phone down.
---
On Monday there were three daffodils.
Nakamura sat down and looked at them and said nothing and moved them carefully to the side of his desk and then spent ten minutes pretending to read while actually looking at them.
Kawamura watched him from the corner of her eye.
"Still no note," she said, very quietly.
"Still no note," he confirmed.
"Does it bother you? Not knowing who—"
"I have a guess."
She looked at him. "Which guess."
He was quiet for a moment. Picked up his pen. Put it down. "I don't know what to do with it either way," he said finally. "So."
Kawamura nodded, slowly. "Because of Matsumura."
It wasn't a question. Nakamura answered it anyway.
"Because of a lot of things." He looked at the daffodils. Three of them, bright and completely unambiguous, sitting on the corner of his desk like a question someone had left without waiting for the answer. "Because I spent a long time wanting something and then I decided to want something else instead. And now—" He paused.
"Now both things are happening at once," Kawamura said quietly.
Nakamura said nothing.
She reached over and straightened the daffodils, very slightly, so they leaned together instead of apart.
"You know what daffodils mean," she said. Not a question.
"I know what daffodils mean."
"Then whoever is leaving them—" She paused. Chose her words. "They're not asking you to do anything. They're just saying something true." She picked up her pencil. "That's different."
Nakamura looked at the flowers.
Three of them. Yellow as intention. Yellow as something that had decided not to be quiet about itself.
I have been holding this for a long time.
He thought about Matsumura in a bookstore, pulling out a field guide to marine life and handing it to him with a smile that didn't announce itself.
He thought about Hirose on a pavement in winter saying I think I missed things that were in front of me and then not finishing the sentence.
He thought about pink lotuses on silver water and cherry petals falling with no wind and a figure beside him on a blanket holding yellow flowers like they were already his to give.
He picked up his pen.
Started writing.
The daffodils stayed at the corner of his desk all day, and he didn't move them again.
---
That evening Matsumura sat at his own desk with a small bundle of daffodils he hadn't used yet and the distinct private expression of a person who was not going to tell anyone what they were doing and was completely fine with that.
His phone buzzed.
Nakamura: the marine guide. Chapter seven. The section about camouflage.
Matsumura looked at this.
Typed back: what about it
Nakamura: it says some creatures spend so long hiding that they forget what they actually look like.
A pause.
Nakamura: I thought that was interesting.
Matsumura sat with his phone and read that twice and felt something move through his chest — warm and careful and very certain.
He typed: did you find it relatable
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Nakamura: goodnight Matsumura.
Matsumura smiled at his phone.
Goodnight, he sent back.
He looked at the daffodils on his desk.
Tomorrow he'd bring four.
---
To be continued.
---
— some people say things with words. some people take a forty minute train ride every morning and let yellow flowers say it for them. both are valid. one of them is more interesting.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Something Like a Yellow Daffodil
a continuation — Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
In the dream, everything was very still.
Nakamura became aware of it the way you become aware of dreams sometimes — not all at once, but gradually, like surfacing from deep water. First the light. Then the warmth. Then the smell, which was green and soft and carried something floral underneath it, something he didn't have a name for yet.
He was sitting on a blanket.
Short grass stretched around him, impossibly green, the kind of green that exists in dreams and early mornings and nowhere else. Ahead of him — close enough to feel like it belonged to him, far enough to be something to look at — was water. Still and wide and silver at its edges, lotus flowers sitting on the surface in the hundreds, pink as the inside of a shell, pink as something that had never learned to be any other color. They didn't move. The whole scene didn't move. It was held, like a breath.
Above him, a cherry blossom tree.
The petals came down in the windless air, slowly, one at a time, the way things fall in places where there's no hurry.
And beside him, sitting on the same blanket, shoulders nearly touching —
Hirose.
Nakamura knew it before he turned to look. Knew it the way you know things in dreams, not from information but from something deeper, some part of you that has been keeping track all along.
Hirose was smiling.
Not the public smile — not the one he aimed at rooms and hallways. This one was smaller. Just for here. Just for this blanket and this light and whoever happened to be beside him.
In his hands, a bunch of daffodils.
Bright yellow. Impossibly yellow, the yellow of something that wanted to be seen, that had no interest in being subtle about itself. He was holding them loosely, the way you hold something you're not afraid of losing, and when Nakamura looked at them he felt something move through his chest that he couldn't name.
Hirose turned and looked at him.
"You're finally here," he said.
Just that.
You're finally here.
Nakamura opened his mouth —
---
He woke up to Icchan on his pillow.
He stared at the ceiling for a full thirty seconds, breathing, the dream still hanging around him like smoke, the yellow of the daffodils still burning somewhere behind his eyes.
"I had a dream," he told the ceiling.
Icchan moved one tentacle onto his forehead in acknowledgment.
"It was—" He stopped. Pressed his hand over his face. "It was him. It was Hirose. He was holding these flowers and he said—" He exhaled. "Never mind what he said."
He sat up.
Icchan relocated from the pillow to his knee with the unhurried dignity of something that had no interest in being rushed.
Nakamura looked at him. Then he reached for his phone.
He typed into the search bar: pink lotus flower meaning.
The first result came up immediately.
Pink lotus: spiritual awakening. The transition from one state of understanding to another. Associated with the moment between not knowing and knowing. A bridge.
He stared at that for a moment.
Typed: cherry blossom meaning.
Cherry blossom: the beauty of impermanence. Mono no aware — the gentle sadness of things that do not last. Also: a new beginning. The moment just before something changes.
He put the phone down. Picked it back up.
Yellow daffodil meaning.
He almost didn't want to read it.
Yellow daffodil: unrequited love. Longing. The specific ache of feeling something deeply that has nowhere to go. In the language of flowers, to give someone a daffodil is to say: I have been holding this for a long time.
Nakamura sat very still.
Icchan watched him with both eyes.
Outside his window the morning was doing ordinary morning things — grey light, distant traffic, someone's radio. All of it completely indifferent to the fact that Nakamura was sitting in his bedroom in his pajamas having just been handed, by his own subconscious, a message in flower language.
"My brain," Nakamura said quietly, "is not subtle."
He looked at Icchan.
"He was holding them," he said. "He was holding the daffodils. Not me. He was the one—"
He stopped.
The language of flowers. To give someone a daffodil is to say: I have been holding this for a long time.
"No," Nakamura said. To himself, to the dream, to whatever part of him had constructed it with such careful symbolism. "No. That's not — that's not what that means. That's just a dream. That's just my brain making things up." He put his phone face-down on the blanket. "It doesn't mean anything."
Icchan placed a tentacle firmly on his knee.
"It doesn't."
The tentacle remained.
"I'm going to meet Matsumura today," Nakamura said, changing the subject with great determination. "We're going to that bookstore. It's going to be a normal day."
He got up.
He got dressed.
He spent six minutes standing in front of the mirror thinking about the color yellow.
---
The bookstore was the narrow kind, the kind that had too many books for its own square footage and had long ago made peace with that fact. Shelves that went to the ceiling. A ladder on a rail. The smell of paper and a small heater working very hard in the corner.
Matsumura was in the manga section when Nakamura found him, reading the back cover of something with the focused expression he wore when he was actually interested in something and not performing interest.
He looked up when Nakamura arrived.
"You look terrible," he said.
"Good morning to you too."
"Did you sleep?"
"I slept." Nakamura took the manga from him, looked at it without seeing it, handed it back. "I just — dreamed."
Matsumura looked at him with that particular attention of his — the kind that didn't announce itself but didn't miss much either. He didn't say anything right away. Just turned back to the shelf and made room for Nakamura beside him, which was one of the things Nakamura had quietly noticed: Matsumura always made room. Not dramatically, not as a gesture. Just — shifted, and suddenly there was space.
They browsed in silence for a while.
Nakamura pulled books out and put them back without reading any of them.
"You're not actually looking at those," Matsumura said.
"I am."
"You put that one back upside down."
Nakamura looked at the shelf. He had.
He sighed. Put his hands in his pockets. Looked at a row of spines that blurred slightly in his vision because his head was still somewhere in a field of pink lotuses.
"I dreamed about Hirose," he said.
The words came out before he'd given them permission. That happened sometimes with Matsumura — the composure Nakamura had spent months building would develop small, specific leaks, and they always seemed to appear when Matsumura was just standing beside him, not pushing, not asking, just present.
It was deeply inconvenient.
Matsumura didn't react visibly. "Okay," he said. His voice was neutral in the careful way of someone keeping it that way on purpose.
"It was—" Nakamura pulled out a book he didn't want and stared at the cover. "It was one of those dreams. The kind that feel like something. You know the kind."
"Yeah."
"There was a field. And a lake. Lotuses. Cherry blossoms." He paused. "He was holding daffodils."
Matsumura was very still beside him.
"Yellow ones," Nakamura said, because apparently he was going to say all of it. "I looked up the flowers when I woke up. I don't know why I did that. I knew I shouldn't." He put the book back on the shelf. "Pink lotus means the bridge between not knowing and knowing. Cherry blossom means the moment before something changes. And daffodils — yellow daffodils — mean longing. Unrequited. The feeling of holding something that has nowhere to go."
The small heater clicked in the corner.
"And in the dream," Nakamura said quietly, "he was the one holding them. Not me."
Silence.
He kept looking at the shelf. He couldn't quite look at Matsumura right now. He wasn't sure why he was saying any of this. He wasn't sure he could have stopped once it started.
"I decided," Nakamura said. "A long time ago, I decided to let it go. I chose friendship over — over the other thing. And I meant it. I still mean it." His voice stayed even. Mostly. "But my brain apparently didn't get the memo. Because I woke up this morning and his face was the first thing I thought of. Again. And I'm so—" He stopped.
He put both hands flat against the bookshelf.
"I'm so tired," he said, "of how long this has been."
It came out with the full weight of it. All of it. Not performed, not dressed up, not swallowed at the last second. Just the truth of a person who had been carrying something for a very long time and had walked into a narrow bookstore between too many shelves and the words had just come out.
Matsumura didn't say anything immediately.
Nakamura stood there and felt exposed and kept his eyes on the book spines.
Then Matsumura exhaled slowly. And he said, not unkindly: "How long."
"Since the first day of high school."
A breath.
"Nakamura."
"I know."
"That's—"
"I know. It's a long time. It's too long." He finally turned and looked at Matsumura, who was watching him with an expression Nakamura couldn't fully catalog — something serious, something that was working very hard, something that might have had an edge of hurt in it but was keeping that to itself. "I'm not — this isn't me telling you I'm still—" He paused. Collected himself. "I'm not in the same place I was. I genuinely am not. Things have changed." He looked back at the shelf. "But he's still there. Inside all of it. And sometimes, like this morning, I wake up and it's like the distance I put between then and now just — collapses. And I'm back at the beginning."
The bookstore was quiet around them. A few other customers, far enough away to not matter.
Matsumura reached up slowly and pulled a book off the shelf. Looked at it. He wasn't reading it. He was just giving his hands something to do.
"Do you want to be?" he asked.
"Do I want to be what."
"Back at the beginning. With him." His voice was very measured. "Is that what you want?"
Nakamura looked at him.
Really looked.
At the careful neutrality Matsumura was holding over his face like a shield, and the thing underneath it that the shield wasn't quite covering — the particular stillness of someone waiting for an answer that mattered to them.
Something turned over in Nakamura's chest. Slowly. Like a page.
"No," he said.
Matsumura looked up.
"I want to stop being someone who wakes up from that dream and has to remind himself why it can't be real." Nakamura held his gaze steadily. "That's what I want. I want to stop being in the beginning." He paused. "I just don't fully know how to get there yet."
The book in Matsumura's hands.
The small heater clicking.
"Okay," Matsumura said finally. His voice had changed slightly — still careful, but the carefulness was different now. Less armor, more intention. He put the book back on the shelf. "Then we figure out how to get there."
"We," Nakamura repeated.
"Is that a problem."
It should have been deflected. Nakamura had a whole system — he was very good at deflecting things, at keeping the right amount of distance between himself and anything that required too much vulnerability. He had practiced it for years. He was excellent at it.
"No," he said.
No deflection.
Just: no.
Matsumura held his gaze for a moment, and something in him settled — visibly, like a held breath finally released. He didn't make a thing of it. He just turned back to the shelves and started looking at books properly this time.
"Tell me more about the flowers," he said. Casual. Easy. Like they had all the time in the world. "What did the lotus mean again exactly?"
Nakamura looked at him.
"The bridge between not knowing and knowing," he said.
Matsumura nodded slowly. "And where do you think you are on that bridge right now."
Nakamura considered the question honestly.
He thought about the yellow daffodils, bright as intention. He thought about the cherry blossom petals falling in windless air. He thought about you're finally here in a voice that sounded like Hirose but meant something his waking mind was still working out. He thought about Icchan on his pillow and how his first instinct when he woke up had been to talk, and the person he'd been thinking about talking to, without fully deciding to, was standing beside him in a narrow bookstore smelling like cold air and someone who had traveled forty minutes to be here.
"Somewhere in the middle," he said.
Matsumura pulled out another book and handed it to him. Their fingers overlapped for a half-second on the spine. Neither of them moved away from it immediately.
"That's fine," Matsumura said. "The middle is fine."
Nakamura looked down at the book.
It was a field guide to marine life.
He looked up at Matsumura, who was already turning back to the shelves with the faint suggestion of a smile.
"There's a whole chapter on cephalopods," Matsumura said. "I thought Icchan might want some company."
Nakamura stood there for a moment.
Then, quietly, with the unguarded quality that only came out when he wasn't watching for it —
He laughed.
---
To be continued.
---
— yellow daffodils mean longing. but longing is not the same as destination. sometimes a dream is just your heart clearing its throat.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Something Like Warfare
a continuation — Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
It started with the coffee.
Matsumura had established, over several weeks of careful observation, that Nakamura took his coffee black, no sugar, from the second vending machine on the third floor because it dispensed three seconds faster than the one on the first floor, and Nakamura was the kind of person who had noticed that and adjusted his life accordingly.
So on Monday morning Matsumura arrived at Hoshimi High at seven forty-five — forty minutes before his own school started, which meant a thirty-minute train ride, which he did not think about too hard — walked to the third floor vending machine, and bought two coffees.
He found Nakamura at his desk.
"Morning," he said, and put the coffee down.
Nakamura looked at it. Looked at Matsumura. "You're here very early."
"I was in the area."
"You live—"
"Forty minutes away, yes, Nakamura, I'm aware of where I live."
Nakamura picked up the coffee. Something warm moved through his expression — brief, unguarded — before he pulled it back into something more neutral. "Thanks."
Matsumura sat on the edge of the desk across from him, satisfied with this outcome, and they talked for twenty minutes about nothing important, which was quickly becoming Matsumura's favorite kind of conversation.
He left before class started.
He passed Hirose in the hallway on the way out.
They made eye contact.
Neither of them said anything.
Hirose looked at the coffee in Nakamura's hand through the classroom doorway.
Matsumura smiled pleasantly and kept walking.
---
On Tuesday, Hirose arrived at seven forty.
"Morning," he said, dropping into the seat across from Nakamura and producing, from his bag, a container of convenience store tamagoyaki. "My mom made too much. You like egg, right?"
Nakamura stared at the container. "Did your mother actually make that or did you buy it."
"She — it was in the house."
"The sticker from the convenience store is still on the container."
"She went to the convenience store." Hirose pushed it across the desk. "Just eat it."
Nakamura ate it. He had the expression of someone trying not to find something endearing and failing.
"This is good," he said.
"I know." Hirose leaned back in his chair and watched Nakamura eat with the careful casualness of someone who had rehearsed this interaction on the train. "How's Icchan?"
Nakamura paused mid-bite. Looked at him. "You're asking about Icchan."
"We're friends. I can ask about your octopus."
"You've never asked about Icchan."
"I'm asking now."
Nakamura put his chopsticks down slowly. He had the particular expression of a person doing math. "Matsumura came by yesterday."
"I know."
"And now you're here with egg."
"It's not — this isn't—" Hirose picked up a pencil from the desk and put it back down. "I just wanted to see how you were doing."
Nakamura looked at him for a long moment with those dark, steady eyes.
"I'm fine," he said carefully.
"Good." Hirose nodded. Nodded again. "Good. That's good."
A pause.
"Icchan is also fine," Nakamura offered.
"Great. Good for Icchan."
They sat in slightly awkward silence.
This was new, Nakamura thought. Hirose had been — different, lately. Showing up early. Staying near. Asking questions that felt like they were covering for other questions. Nakamura had noticed and then immediately instructed himself not to notice, the way you learn not to poke a bruise.
It was not working.
---
By Wednesday the classroom had become a theater and exactly two people were unaware of the performance.
"He brought food again," Mukai reported to Kawamura in a low voice during second period, both of them watching Hirose watch Nakamura from across the room with an expression he was clearly not aware he was making.
"He brought food again," Kawamura confirmed without looking up from her notes, because she had already seen it and had been quietly cataloging everything since Monday.
"And the other one was here yesterday."
"And Monday."
"Before school."
"Before school," Kawamura agreed.
Mukai tapped his pencil against his notebook. "Does Nakamura know?"
Kawamura finally looked up. She looked at Nakamura, who was taking notes with his usual focus, giving Hirose's general direction a perfectly normal amount of attention.
"He knows something," she said. "He doesn't know what to do with it yet."
"And Hirose?"
They both looked at Hirose, who was not taking notes and was staring at the back of Nakamura's head with the expression of a man quietly having a personal crisis during second period chemistry.
"Hirose," Mukai said slowly, "looks like someone who just found out a restaurant he walked past every day for a year has a waitlist."
Kawamura considered this. "That is genuinely a good analogy."
"I have moments." He flipped to a new page. "This is going to get messy."
"It's already messy."
"Messier, then."
They went back to their notes.
---
On Thursday Matsumura sent a voice memo.
Just — a voice memo, unprompted, of him doing an impression of a blue-ringed octopus which was objectively not how octopuses sounded but was so committed in its wrongness that Nakamura sat alone at the vending machine and laughed until his shoulders shook, silently, hand over his mouth.
He listened to it three times.
He did not think about what that meant.
He sent back: that's not what they sound like
Matsumura: how do you know. Have you heard one
Nakamura: they don't make sounds
Matsumura: you don't know that for certain. Maybe they make sounds and you just can't hear them. Maybe that's exactly what they sound like
Nakamura: that's not how—
Matsumura: Nakamura. Let me have this.
Nakamura stared at his phone. Felt the smile on his face. Looked at the wall.
Don't, he told himself.
I know, he answered.
---
On Friday Hirose fell into step beside Nakamura after school and said, very casually, "Do you want to go somewhere."
Nakamura looked at him. "Where."
"Anywhere. I don't know. Walk."
They walked.
It was late afternoon, that particular winter light that made everything look like a photograph of itself, and Hirose put his hands in his pockets and didn't say whatever he'd come out here to say, and Nakamura walked beside him and waited.
"Do you remember," Hirose started, "the field trip. In Yokohama."
Nakamura went very still inside. "Yeah."
"You disappeared. I went and found you." He paused. "You were — I don't know. You seemed like you were working something out."
"I was."
"What were you working out?"
Nakamura looked at the street ahead. At the long shadow they made together on the pavement. "Whether things were going to be okay," he said.
"Were they?"
A beat.
"They got better," Nakamura said carefully.
Hirose nodded. He didn't say anything for another block. Then: "I think I've been — " He stopped. Started again. "I think I missed some things. That were in front of me."
Nakamura said nothing.
"I'm not very — I don't always—" Hirose made a small frustrated sound. "Why are you not making this easier."
"Why would I make it easier."
"Because you're — because that's just how you—"
"Hirose," Nakamura said quietly.
Hirose stopped.
"Whatever you're trying to say," Nakamura said, eyes still forward, voice steady in the way he'd trained it to be steady, "you don't have to say it now. Okay? You don't have to—" He breathed. "Just. Don't say anything you're not sure about."
Hirose looked at him.
Nakamura was looking straight ahead. His jaw was set. His hands were in his pockets. He looked composed and slightly exhausted in the specific way of someone who had built very sturdy walls and was now watching someone walk up to them with uncertain intentions and didn't know whether to open the door or reinforce the foundation.
"Okay," Hirose said softly.
They walked home in silence.
It was almost comfortable.
Almost.
---
That night Nakamura sat on his floor with his back against his bed and said absolutely nothing for a long time.
Icchan's tank cast blue light across the ceiling.
"He walked home with me," Nakamura said eventually.
The tank bubbled softly.
"He asked about Yokohama." He pulled his knees up. "He said he missed things that were in front of him. He said that. To my face. Hirose said that."
A pause.
"I know." He pressed the back of his head against the bed frame. "I know I'm not supposed to — I know I decided. I know it's different now and things have changed and I've been — I was fine. I was getting to fine. Icchan you watched me get to fine."
The water moved.
"And then he brought egg on Tuesday and walked home with me and said I missed things and now I'm—" He made a sound of complete despair. "I'm back here. I'm back in this exact—" He laughed, a short, wretched sound. "I'm pathetic."
A movement from the tank.
Nakamura looked up.
Icchan was at the top of the water.
Nakamura stared. "No. You can't — the lid is supposed to be—"
A tentacle found the gap.
"Icchan—"
Eight legs and one very determined octopus lowered themselves with the slow, inevitable gravity of a creature who had been listening to this for months and had decided that something needed to be done about it. Icchan settled onto Nakamura's lap with a cold, wet solemnity.
Nakamura looked down at him.
"You got out of your tank," he said.
Icchan regarded him.
"You've never done that before."
One tentacle rose with extraordinary deliberateness. And then, gently, with the measured care of a creature who had arrived at this decision over many Saturdays and many confessions and many quiet blue evenings — it slapped Nakamura softly across the face.
Nakamura sat very still.
The tentacle settled on his cheek and stayed there.
He stared at the wall.
His eyes went very bright.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay. I hear you."
He reached up and put his hand over Icchan's tentacle, very carefully, the way you hold something you're afraid to break.
"I know," he said. "I know it's not—I know I can't keep—" He breathed. "I just don't know how to stop wanting something I wanted for so long."
Icchan sat on his lap. Solid and cold and completely present.
"Matsumura makes it easier," Nakamura said, very quietly. Like a confession. "When I'm around him I'm not thinking about— it's different. He's different with me. He just—" He paused. "He just shows up. He doesn't make a thing of it. He just arrives and hands me coffee and says something wrong about octopuses and I forget to — "
He stopped.
"I forget to hurt," he said.
He sat with that for a moment.
"That's something, right?" He looked down at Icchan. "That's not nothing."
Icchan's tentacle moved slightly against his cheek. Slow. Patient. The way everything about Icchan was slow and patient, having all the time in the world, having been alive long enough to know that most things resolved themselves if you waited without panicking.
Nakamura exhaled. Long and slow.
"Don't tell either of them I cried."
Icchan blinked.
"I know you can't talk. I'm just being thorough."
He sat on the floor in the blue light for a while, octopus on his lap, hand pressed gently over a tentacle, and let himself feel the whole mess of it — Hirose's voice saying I missed things, Matsumura's voice memo, the ramen shop, the aquarium, all the Saturdays, all the careful smiles, all the fine's that were almost true — and then, slowly, let it settle.
It didn't go away.
It just settled.
That was enough for tonight.
---
Across town, Hirose was lying on his bed texting Mukai: do you think I messed up
Mukai's response: yes
Hirose: wow thanks
Mukai: you asked. you messed up. the question is what you're going to do about it
Hirose: I don't even know what I'm doing
Mukai: yeah. we know.
Hirose: who's we
Mukai: me and Kawamura. We've been watching this for weeks. We have a working theory.
Hirose sat up. You and Kawamura, talk??? And what theory?
Mukai: We do. Y'know that you're an idiot who finally noticed something everyone else saw a long time ago
Hirose: that's not a theory that's just an insult
Mukai: it can be both. goodnight Hirose.
Hirose stared at his phone.
On the other side of town, Matsumura was at his desk doing homework and occasionally not doing homework and thinking instead about a smile in a ramen shop, and the specific way Nakamura's eyes went bright when something genuinely caught him off guard, and what it would take to keep being the person who got to see that.
He was going to have to be patient.
He was going to have to be more patient than he had ever been in his life.
He was also going to have to be faster than Hirose.
He picked up his phone and sent Nakamura a single message:
What time do you get to school on Monday.
The response came after a minute: why
Matsumura smiled.
I'll bring better coffee this time, he typed.
Three dots. A pause.
...7:40.
Matsumura put his phone down and went back to his homework feeling, for the first time in a while, like the score was moving in his favor.
---
To be continued.
---
— an octopus that loves you will find a way out of any tank. remember that.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Something Like Too Late
a continuation — Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
The breakup was quiet.
That was the thing about Hana — she was perceptive in the way that kind people sometimes are, the kind of perceptive that doesn't announce itself, that just sits and watches and waits until it's certain. She'd been watching Hirose for three weeks. Since the Saturday he'd cancelled on her. Since the apology call where he'd said I'm fine in a voice that meant something else entirely.
She asked him to meet her at the park near school on a Wednesday after classes.
It was cold. The trees had gone bare. She stood with her hands in her coat pockets and looked at him with an expression that was sad but not surprised, which was somehow the worst part.
"You've been somewhere else," she said. Not accusing. Just true.
Hirose opened his mouth.
"It's okay," Hana said. "I'd rather know."
The thing about Hana was that she'd always been uncomplicated in her honesty. It was one of the things he'd liked about her from the start. He'd wanted that — the clean, forward-moving feeling of liking someone who liked him back, of something that went in one direction without doubling over itself.
He hadn't anticipated becoming a person who doubled.
"I'm sorry," he said. And meant it, deeply, in the specific way you mean something when you're apologizing for a version of yourself you didn't plan on becoming.
She nodded. Her eyes were a little bright. She didn't let them spill over.
"Is it someone I know?" she asked.
Hirose thought about a ramen shop window. About dark eyes going soft and unguarded over something Matsumura had said.
"I don't know yet," he said honestly.
Hana looked at him for a long moment. Then she let out a breath that turned to mist in the cold air.
"Figure it out," she said, not unkindly. "You're better than this, Hirose. Be better. Besides, you're more boring than I thought."
She walked away.
He stood in the park until the cold got into his jacket.
---
The problem was that looking, once started, was very hard to stop.
He'd had practice ignoring things about Nakamura. He'd had months of practice, actually, of accepting Nakamura's presence at the edge of his attention without examining it too closely — the way you learn to not look directly at something bright. He'd gotten good at it.
But now he was looking.
Nakamura in the morning, arriving before most of the class, sitting with whatever book he was currently reading, one leg folded under him in a way that should have looked awkward but didn't. The particular quality of stillness he had when he was absorbed in something — complete, unhurried, like the world had agreed to hold its breath.
Nakamura in class, making a dry observation under his breath that made Kawamura press her hand over her mouth to muffle a laugh, and the small private smile he got when he made her laugh, like it was something he collected.
Nakamura at the vending machine, tilting his head back to drink, and Hirose had been standing six feet away and had to physically look at the wall.
This is a problem, Hirose thought.
You created this problem, another part of him responded. You had a front row seat and you looked away.
"You're staring again."
Hirose startled. Mukai had materialized beside him, eating a bread roll, looking at Hirose with the tired, knowing expression of someone who had been watching this specific disaster unfold for months.
"I wasn't—"
"You were." Mukai took a bite. "You've been doing it for two weeks. It's becoming a thing people are going to notice."
"No one's noticing."
"Kawamura's noticed." Mukai said this with the calm of someone deploying information strategically. "She hasn't said anything. But she's noticed."
Hirose looked across the classroom to where Kawamura was sitting beside Nakamura, both of them looking at something in her sketchbook, their heads close together. Nakamura said something. She nodded seriously and made a small correction with her pencil.
The comfortable shorthand of people who had been keeping each other's secrets.
She knows, Hirose realized. She's known all along.
The bread roll crinkled. "So," Mukai said pleasantly. "What are you going to do about Matsumura?"
Hirose said nothing.
"Because I'm hearing from reliable sources—"
"What reliable sources."
"—that he's been coming around quite a bit. The aquarium. The ramen place. Apparently last week he just showed up at the school gates on a Saturday with two convenience store coffees like that was a normal thing to do." Mukai finished his bread. "And Nakamura took the coffee."
Hirose's jaw tightened.
"That's nothing."
"Okay," Mukai said, in a tone that meant the opposite.
---
He texted Matsumura that evening.
We need to talk.
The response came quickly: about
Don't.
A longer pause this time. Then: park near Hoshimi High. Saturday morning.
---
Saturday was grey and threatening rain.
Matsumura was already there — he was always early, Hirose remembered, it was one of his things — sitting on the back of a bench with his feet on the seat, looking perfectly unbothered by the weather.
He looked at Hirose when he approached. Something careful moved through his expression and then settled.
"Hey," Matsumura said.
"What are you doing with Nakamura."
Matsumura tilted his head. "Good morning to you too."
"Matsumura."
"I'm getting to know him." He said it simply, without defense. "Is that a problem?"
"You spent months treating him like—"
"I know what I did." Something firmed in Matsumura's voice. Not quite an apology but adjacent to one — the voice of someone who had already done their accounting privately and didn't need to do it again publicly. "Things change. People change. You know that better than anyone right now."
Hirose looked at him.
"Hana and I broke up," he said.
A beat.
Matsumura's expression shifted — genuinely, with actual care, because whatever else he was, he was Hirose's friend. "I'm sorry. Are you—"
"I'm fine." He wasn't, entirely, but that wasn't the conversation. "I need to know what your intentions are."
The careful look came back.
"Hirose," Matsumura said slowly.
"Just tell me."
The wind moved through the bare trees. Matsumura looked at him for a long moment — reading him, the way he'd always been able to read Hirose, and Hirose watched something in his face change as he did. The careful look becoming something else. Something that was still careful but also pointed.
"You broke up with your girlfriend," Matsumura said. Quiet. Precise. "And the first thing you did was come find me about Nakamura."
"That's not—"
"You've been watching him."
"I—"
"Hirose." Matsumura stood up from the bench. He wasn't taller than Hirose by much but he used the height fully, straightened into it. His voice was level but there was an edge beneath it now, clean and serious. "You like girls."
The words landed flat.
"That's what I knew. That's what you've always — " Matsumura paused. "So I didn't think. I answered your questions about Nakamura, I talked to you about him, I thought I was just — talking to my friend about someone I was figuring out." He looked at Hirose steadily. "And now you're here. Two weeks after your girlfriend. And you're asking me about my intentions."
Hirose said nothing.
"So I'll ask you the same thing." Matsumura's voice didn't rise. Didn't heat. That was somehow worse. "What are your intentions."
The park was very quiet.
"I don't know," Hirose said. It came out smaller than he intended.
"That's not good enough."
"I know it's not—"
"No, listen to me." Matsumura stepped forward once, not aggressively, but close enough that the conversation became private. "I've been watching Nakamura for two months. Actually watching him. Do you know how he takes his coffee? Do you know that he only laughs like that — the real one, the unguarded one — when something catches him completely off guard, and that it happens maybe twice in a day if you're lucky and you start keeping track without realizing it? Do you know that he went to that aquarium every single Saturday for months and talked to that octopus because he had something too heavy to carry alone and nowhere else to put it?"
Hirose was very still.
"He carried it alone," Matsumura said. "All of it. Right next to you, every day, and you didn't — "He stopped. Breathed. "I'm not saying that to be cruel. I'm saying it because I need you to understand what you're inserting yourself into."
"He was in love with me," Hirose said. It came out raw, like pulling something that had been stuck. "I know that."
"Was." Matsumura looked at him. "You should think carefully about that word."
The rain started. Just light, just the beginning of it, barely enough to feel.
"I like him," Matsumura said simply. "I didn't plan it. I didn't go looking for it. It just — became true, the way things do when you actually pay attention to someone." He picked up his jacket from the bench. "And he's just starting to be okay. He's just starting to actually let himself be okay." His voice went careful in a way that was clearly costing him something. "So if you're going to do something, know what you're doing first. Don't go in half-decided and make it worse for him because you got curious too late."
"That's not what this is."
"Isn't it?"
Hirose didn't answer.
Matsumura put on his jacket. He looked at Hirose with something that was simultaneously the expression of a longtime friend and a person who was not going to move.
"I told you I'd win," he said. "Back then. I said it to be cruel and I was wrong to." A pause. "But Hirose. I'm not stepping back from this."
"Neither am I."
The words came out before Hirose had fully decided on them. He felt them leave his mouth and didn't pull them back.
Something shifted in Matsumura's expression. Not surprise — Matsumura rarely looked surprised — but something that acknowledged a new shape to things. A recalibration.
"Then we understand each other," Matsumura said quietly.
He walked past Hirose toward the station.
Hirose stood in the rain and thought about dark eyes and an unguarded laugh in a warm ramen shop and a person who had carried something heavy alone for months right next to him without saying a word.
He thought about was.
He thought about how much work it took to turn a was into what it needed to be.
He pulled out his phone.
He stood there in the wet and grey for a long time without knowing who to call.
---
That evening, in a bedroom lit by the blue glow of a tank by the window, Nakamura was lying on his bed and not thinking about anything in particular.
Icchan moved slowly through his water.
Nakamura watched him.
"Matsumura texted," he said to the ceiling. "He wants to go to that bookstore near the station next week."
Icchan drifted.
"I said yes." A pause. He turned his head to look at the tank, at the soft moving light. "I don't know what that means yet. If it means anything."
He thought about the ramen shop. About laughing at something without catching himself first.
"I think I might be—" He stopped. Started again. "I think something might be—"
He pressed his hand over his eyes.
"I know," he said to Icchan. "I know. Too soon. Too fast. I know."
He breathed.
"I just," he said quietly. "I forgot what it felt like. To enjoy someone's company and not — " He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
He knew what he was talking about.
Not have it hurt, he didn't say.
Not have every second of it feel like standing at the edge of something that was never going to hold you.
He looked at the ceiling.
Somewhere across the city, things were moving. People were deciding things. He didn't know that. He couldn't know that.
He just knew the blue light on the wall, and the quiet, and Icchan watching him with ancient patience, and something in his chest that was maybe — possibly — cautiously beginning to feel like hope.
---
To be continued.
---
— it is a specific kind of pain to realize you were the reason someone learned to stop hoping. and a specific kind of reckoning to decide what you'll do with that knowledge.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Something Like Jealousy
a continuation — Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
Icchan now lived in a tank by Nakamura's window.
It had taken three weeks of paperwork, one very patient aquarium staff member, and a tank that cost more than Nakamura's school bag, but Icchan was here now, settled against his new rock, regarding the bedroom ceiling with the same ancient indifference with which he had once regarded the aquarium floor. Nakamura had arranged the tank so that the light hit it in the evenings the same way the aquarium lights used to — that soft, deepening blue.
It wasn't the same.
But Icchan didn't seem to mind.
"You're going to have to learn to deal with him eventually," Nakamura told him one night, sitting on the edge of his bed, still in his uniform. "He's going to keep coming around."
Icchan moved one arm with enormous philosophical slowness.
"I know," Nakamura said. "I don't fully understand it either."
He lay back and stared at the ceiling and thought about last Saturday — Matsumura arriving at the aquarium like he hadn't just traveled forty minutes with zero reason. The way he'd sat down without making it a big thing. The way he'd said *I don't think you were ever a long shot* like it was something he needed to get out of himself, not something he needed Nakamura to receive.
Nakamura had thought about that sentence more than he intended to.
He closed his eyes.
It doesn't mean anything, he told himself. People are just — people. Matsumura is just being decent. That's all.
Icchan offered no rebuttal.
---
The texts started small.
Is it true you can identify different octopus species on sight — this was the first one, on a Tuesday evening, from a number Nakamura had never saved.
He stared at it.
Typed back: who is this
Matsumura. Hirose gave me your number. Is it true or not
...yes
Incredible. What's the most dangerous one
And somehow that turned into forty minutes of Nakamura explaining blue-ringed octopus neurotoxins to Matsumura, who kept asking follow-up questions that were actually good questions, which was annoying, because it would have been easier if the questions were stupid.
After that it kept happening. Not every day. Not in any pattern Nakamura could predict or prepare for. Just — Matsumura, appearing in his phone, asking things. What Nakamura was reading. Whether he'd seen a particular film. Once, inexplicably, whether Nakamura thought ramen broth was better cloudy or clear.
Clear, Nakamura said.
Wrong. Meet me Saturday and I'll prove it.
Nakamura had looked at that message for a long time.
Then: fine.
---
The ramen shop was small and warm and tucked between a bookstore and a dry cleaner on a street Nakamura had never thought to walk down. It smelled like pork bone and winter and the particular comfort of somewhere that had been feeding people for a long time.
Matsumura was already there when he arrived. Already had menus. Already looked insufferably at ease.
"You're early," Nakamura said, sitting across from him.
"I'm always early." Matsumura slid a menu toward him. "Order the tonkotsu. You'll admit I'm right and we can move on with our lives."
"Bold of you to assume I'll admit anything."
"I've met you. You're honest to a fault."
Nakamura looked at the menu. "That's a strange thing to know about someone."
"I pay attention."
The words landed simply, without weight, and yet Nakamura felt them settle somewhere in his chest — not painfully, just there. He kept his eyes on the menu.
They ordered. The food came. Matsumura was, infuriatingly, correct about the tonkotsu.
"Don't," Matsumura said, watching Nakamura's face.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were making the face of someone trying very hard not to say something."
"I don't make faces."
"Nakamura. You make extraordinary faces. You just don't know you're doing it." Matsumura picked up his chopsticks. "It's one of the more interesting things about you."
Nakamura looked up. "You think about interesting things about me."
"Apparently."
It came out easy. Comfortable. Matsumura said it the way you said things when you'd stopped performing them, and Nakamura looked at him across the small table in the warm ramen shop and thought: *when did this happen.* When did Matsumura go from a rival he'd cataloged as a threat to someone who traveled forty minutes to sit in an aquarium and met his octopus and texted him about blue-ringed neurotoxins on Tuesday evenings.
Something in him went very quiet.
Not the heavy quiet of grief, not the careful quiet of keeping things in.
Just — quiet. The way a room feels when something that has been humming for a very long time finally stops.
He smiled. Without meaning to, without managing it, just — smiled.
Matsumura saw it. And the expression on his face did something Nakamura noticed and then immediately looked away from, because it was the kind of expression that required time to think about.
---
Hirose saw them through the window.
He'd been on his way to meet Hana — she'd texted about a new place she wanted to try, something sweet, a dessert café two blocks over — and he'd taken this street because it was faster, and he'd glanced in out of pure chance, pure coincidence, and then stopped walking.
Nakamura and Matsumura.
In a ramen shop. At a small table by the wall. Close enough that the steam from their bowls rose between them like something shared.
Hirose stood on the pavement and watched.
Matsumura was talking, gesturing slightly with his chopsticks, and Nakamura was listening with his chin resting in one hand and there was a smile on his face — not the polite, carefully constructed smile Hirose had been seeing for months, not the one that was real but also guarded, but something looser. Something that had come out without permission.
And Matsumura was looking at him.
Hirose knew that look.
He knew it the way you know the shape of something you've been looking at for a long time — from memory, from the particular quality of attention it carried. Soft and fixed and slightly wondering, like the person looking wasn't entirely sure what they were seeing but wanted to keep seeing it.
Nakamura used to look at Hirose like that.
Used to.
Hirose's phone buzzed. Hana. I'm here! Where are you?
He stood on the pavement for another three seconds.
Then he typed back: sorry — something came up. I'll explain later. He felt bad immediately. He'd make it up to her. He would. But something was pulling at the back of his sternum like a thread being slowly drawn tight, and he couldn't walk away from it yet, and he didn't fully understand why.
He texted Matsumura instead: since when do you and Nakamura eat ramen together.
The response came after a minute — Matsumura's typing bubble appearing and disappearing twice before the message landed:
Since a few weeks ago. Why, are you keeping track?
Hirose stared at his phone.
He thought about every question Matsumura had asked him over the past month. Careful, specific questions. What does Nakamura like to read. Is he close to anyone at school. What's he actually like when he relaxes. Hirose had answered all of them. Freely, willingly, because Matsumura was his friend and it had felt like nothing — like conversation, like the casual interest one person might take in another.
He had handed Matsumura a map and hadn't noticed he was drawing it.
Why are you asking so much about him, Hirose typed.
The bubble appeared. Disappeared.
Then: Hirose.
Then: you're smart. Figure it out.
Hirose looked through the window one more time.
Matsumura had said something and Nakamura laughed — actually laughed, brief and unguarded, ducking his head slightly the way he did when something caught him off guard — and Matsumura was watching it happen with that expression, that fixed, wondering expression —
Hirose put his phone in his pocket and walked away.
---
He went home instead of the café.
He apologized to Hana properly, called her, stayed on the phone long enough that she laughed and told him it was fine and asked if he was okay. He said yes. She believed him, because Hana was trusting in that clean, uncomplicated way, and Hirose sat with the phone in his hand after she hung up and thought: she doesn't deserve whatever this is.
What is this.
He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling and tried to be honest with himself, which was harder than it should have been.
Matsumura was his friend. Had been for years. Matsumura showing interest in someone wasn't — it wasn't Hirose's business. People were allowed to become interested in people. That was normal. That was just how things went.
And Nakamura —
Nakamura was his friend. Nakamura had become his friend in the way that good things sometimes happened, quietly and without announcement, and Hirose valued it. He did. He'd noticed the change in Nakamura, the ease that had come into him, and he'd been glad for it. Relieved, even. It meant things were simple between them now. Uncomplicated. Just two people who liked being around each other.
That was what he'd told himself.
He pressed one hand over his eyes.
Because the thing was — the thing he was just now, in the dark of his own room, being forced to look at — was that he had noticed. Not just that Nakamura had changed. But that he'd missed something. He hadn't been able to name it then, hadn't let himself name it, but sitting here now with the image of Nakamura laughing in a warm ramen shop playing on repeat in his head, he thought:
He used to look at me like that.
Soft and fixed and slightly wondering.
And at some point it had stopped, and Hirose had told himself it was fine, it was better this way, simpler, and maybe he'd believed it.
But Matsumura was getting to have it now. Matsumura, who'd traveled forty minutes on a Saturday, who'd asked questions and remembered the answers and shown up and kept showing up — Matsumura was getting those eyes, that laugh, that unguarded thing Nakamura kept so carefully out of public view.
Hirose felt something small and mean and completely unwelcome turn over in his chest.
He recognized it. He'd read enough, lived enough, spent enough time around people who felt things loudly — he knew what it was.
He hated it.
He hated it because it wasn't fair. He had Hana. He had chosen Hana, had chosen that warmth and ease and the way she made ordinary things feel worth showing up for. He had made that choice and he stood by it and he was —
He was also lying on his bed in the dark at eight on a Saturday night because he'd seen his two friends eat ramen together and couldn't make himself go to a dessert café.
"You're an idiot," he said to the ceiling.
The ceiling did not disagree.
He thought about Nakamura's face. Not the careful face. The other one.
He thought: that was always there. It was always there and it was for me and I didn't—
He stopped thinking that.
He rolled onto his side and looked at the wall.
Outside, the city kept going. Somewhere forty minutes away, Matsumura was maybe walking home from a ramen shop, hands in his pockets, thinking about a smile he'd earned. Somewhere closer, in a bedroom with a tank full of blue light, Nakamura was maybe sitting on his bed, talking to his octopus, feeling something he didn't have to hide.
Hirose closed his eyes.
It's fine, he thought. The same words. The same shape.
The same quiet suspicion that they weren't.
---
To be continued.
---
— the cruelest thing about realizing something late is that the realizing doesn't change the timing.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Something Like Looking
a continuation — Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
The thing about Matsumura was that he had never, in his entire life, lost gracefully.
He was the kind of person who turned everything into a competition — not loudly, not obviously, but beneath that pleasant face and those easy smiles, he kept score of everything. Who texted first. Who laughed longest. Who Hirose looked at when he walked into a room.
He had been keeping score with Nakamura for months.
And then Nakamura had said sure on a sidewalk near the station, and walked away, and Matsumura had gone home that evening and sat on his bed and stared at the wall and thought: that's not how you're supposed to lose.
You were supposed to fight. You were supposed to argue back. You were supposed to care.
Nakamura had looked at him with those dark, unhurried eyes and said Hirose is happy like that was the whole answer, like that was the beginning and the end of it, and Matsumura couldn't stop hearing it.
He thought about the mall.
He didn't mean to. He'd been doing a good job of not thinking about it — it was embarrassing, the whole thing, the way the afternoon had turned soft and weird and completely outside the script of their rivalry. The lost kid. Nakamura crouching down and genuinely, earnestly trying to help, and then getting so flustered that he'd started crying too, which under any other circumstances would have been deeply funny. Matsumura had stepped in — practical, efficient, found a staff member in four minutes flat — and when he turned back around, Nakamura was pressing a candy cane into the kid's hands with an expression of total sincerity, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Matsumura had stood there and watched that and thought, against his will: oh.
Just: oh.
Because Nakamura was — and this was the infuriating part — not what Matsumura had decided he was. He'd decided Nakamura was a nuisance. An obstacle. Someone to be outmaneuvered. He was tall and composed and weirdly cool in the way that very introverted people sometimes are, and he cared about Hirose with this quiet, patient intensity that Matsumura recognized because he recognized it in himself, and somehow all of that had added up in Matsumura's head to enemy.
But the candy cane.
The crying.
The sure.
Matsumura pulled out his phone and texted Hirose: hey, what school does Nakamura go to again.
Hirose replied in four minutes: why
Matsumura typed: just curious
Hirose: ...Hoshimi High, he's literally my classmate. Why do you actually
Matsumura put his phone down.
He looked at the wall some more.
Then he looked up train routes.
---
He told himself it wasn't a big deal.
He was in the area anyway. Roughly. The train lines were connected and it was a Saturday and he had nothing else going on and it wasn't like he was — he wasn't doing anything weird. He just wanted to see.
See what, a sensible part of him asked.
He didn't answer that.
The area around Minami High on a Saturday was quiet. A few students coming and going from club activities, a convenience store doing steady business. Matsumura bought a drink and stood outside with the particular casualness of someone who was definitely not waiting for anyone.
He almost missed him.
Nakamura came from the direction of the train station, bag over one shoulder, hands in his pockets. He was wearing a plain dark jacket and he moved through the crowd the way he apparently moved through everything — without much friction, without drawing attention, just existing at his own pace.
He hadn't noticed Matsumura yet.
Matsumura watched him for a second too long, and then cleared his throat.
"Nakamura."
Nakamura stopped. Looked over. A brief, readable sequence of expressions passed across his face — recognition, mild surprise, and then that same settled calm he'd had at the station.
"Matsumura," he said. "What are you doing here."
It wasn't exactly a question.
"I was in the area."
Nakamura looked at him. "You live forty minutes away."
"I said I was in the area."
A pause. Nakamura looked at him for another moment, not hostile, not particularly warm either, just — measuring.
"Coming from the aquarium?" Matsumura asked.
Something shifted in Nakamura's expression. Small, barely there. "Yeah."
"The octopus thing."
"His name is Icchan."
"You named it."
"Obviously I named him." Nakamura started walking. After a half-second, Matsumura fell into step beside him, which was not something he'd consciously decided to do. "What do you want, Matsumura."
"Nothing. Can't two people walk in the same direction."
"We're walking toward the station, which is the only direction anyone walks around here, so technically yes." Nakamura glanced at him sideways. "But you came all the way out here for nothing."
Matsumura didn't say anything.
Nakamura didn't push it.
They walked in silence for half a block, and it was — not uncomfortable, exactly, which surprised Matsumura. He'd expected it to be awkward. He'd expected the whole dynamic of their rivalry to make simple proximity feel charged and antagonistic. But Nakamura just walked, unhurried, and Matsumura walked beside him, and the afternoon sat around them, cool and ordinary.
"How's Hirose," Matsumura said.
"Fine." A beat. "Happy. He and Hana went to that new café last weekend, apparently."
"She's good for him."
"Yeah." Nakamura's voice was even. Not forced — just even. The kind of even that you either are or you've practiced until you can't tell the difference anymore. "She is."
Matsumura looked at him. At the line of his jaw, the way he was looking straight ahead, the careful neutrality of his whole posture.
"You're really not going to — " He stopped.
"Not going to what."
"Fight me on anything. You used to — every time I brought up Hirose you'd — "
"I know what I used to do."
"So what happened."
Nakamura was quiet for a moment. They reached the crosswalk and stopped at the light, and he looked up at the signal with that same distant expression Matsumura had first noticed months ago, the one that looked like a person watching something they'd already made peace with.
"I decided to be his friend instead," Nakamura said. "That's all."
That's all.
Matsumura thought about the weight that sentence must actually have. The architecture underneath it. The decision that must have cost — he didn't know how much exactly, but he'd seen Nakamura's face in the mall, watching that kid, full of feeling and completely unable to hide it, and he thought: a lot. It cost a lot.
The light changed.
They crossed.
"I'm sorry," Matsumura said. He didn't really plan to.
Nakamura looked at him sharply. "For what."
"For — " He gestured vaguely. "The things I said. At the station. About winning. About you being a long shot."
Nakamura's expression did something complicated. Not wounded — that wasn't quite it. More like he was looking at something he'd already put down and was surprised to have handed back to him.
"It's fine," he said.
"It wasn't."
"No," Nakamura agreed, quietly. "It wasn't. But it's fine."
They reached the station entrance and stopped, and Nakamura turned to face him properly for the first time, and Matsumura had the strange, vertiginous experience of being looked at by someone who was actually looking — not performing, not calculating, just present.
"Why are you really here, Matsumura."
The afternoon was going golden. People moved around them, through the turnstiles, across the plaza. Matsumura thought about the candy cane. About sure. About the aquarium forty minutes away that Nakamura visited on Saturdays to talk to an octopus named Icchan because apparently that was the kind of person Nakamura was.
"I don't know yet," Matsumura said. It was the most honest thing he'd said in a while.
Nakamura looked at him.
Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth turned up. It wasn't a warm smile. It wasn't unfriendly either. It was just real — just Nakamura, as he actually was, looking at Matsumura as he actually was, and finding something there that wasn't an obstacle or an enemy.
Maybe something worth figuring out.
"Okay," Nakamura said.
He tapped his card at the turnstile and went through.
Matsumura stood on his side of the gate and watched him go — and for once, didn't feel like he was losing anything.
---
On Sunday he texted Hirose: your friend Nakamura. Tell me about him.
Hirose's response took seven minutes and said: ...why do you ACTUALLY
Matsumura smiled at his phone.
I'm working on it, he typed back.
---
The next Saturday, Matsumura was at the aquarium.
He'd looked up the train route on Friday. Then he'd told himself he wasn't going. Then he went.
He found Nakamura at the third tank from the left, exactly where he'd apparently always been, elbows on his knees, talking quietly to a large octopus draped over a rock with the air of someone hearing a confession.
Nakamura heard his footsteps and looked up.
He stared at Matsumura for a long moment.
"You followed me to the aquarium," he said flatly.
"I was in the area."
"You live forty minutes away."
"Nakamura — "
"You said that last time."
" — I looked it up and there are actually some very interesting deep-sea exhibits here and I have always been interested in marine — "
"Matsumura."
"...Yeah."
Nakamura looked at him. Then he moved over on the bench.
It was the smallest gesture — just a shift, an inch of space created without fanfare, without comment. An invitation that gave Matsumura every option to refuse.
Matsumura sat down.
They looked at the octopus together for a moment.
"That's Icchan," Nakamura said.
"I know. You told me."
"Just making sure you understood who you were meeting."
Matsumura looked at the octopus, who regarded them both with the solemn indifference of a creature that had been listening to one boy's heartache for months and had absolutely no opinions about newcomers.
"He looks judgmental," Matsumura said.
"He's withholding judgment. There's a difference." A pause. "He'll warm up to you."
"You say that like his opinion matters."
"His opinion matters enormously."
Matsumura looked sideways at Nakamura, who was watching Icchan with complete seriousness, and thought: I had you completely wrong. He thought about all those months of rivalry, all that careful score-keeping, all the energy spent treating this person as an obstacle, and felt — not quite embarrassed, but something adjacent to it. Like realizing you'd been arguing with someone without ever actually listening to what they were saying.
"For the record," Matsumura said, "I don't think you were ever a long shot."
Nakamura didn't respond right away.
The tank light shifted. Blue deepening to blue.
"It doesn't matter now," Nakamura said.
"I know. I just — I wanted to say it."
Nakamura was quiet. And then, so quietly that Matsumura almost missed it under the ambient hush of the aquarium: "Thank you."
Not for the compliment, Matsumura thought. For saying it like it was true. For treating something Nakamura had carried alone as worth acknowledging.
He didn't say that out loud. He just nodded.
They sat there for a while longer, the two of them and the octopus and the blue water and the particular stillness of Saturday afternoon, and for once in his life Matsumura wasn't keeping score.
He was just there.
And that, it turned out, was exactly enough.
---
To be continued.
---
— some people arrive in your life as rivals. some of them stay. some of them sit down on the bench beside you and meet your octopus, and that's how you know something has changed.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN SPRT. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Something Like Letting Go
a Go For It, Nakamura! fanfiction
╰─▸ ❝ @HanEspiritu
---
The first time Hirose noticed, it was during lunch.
Nakamura was sitting by the window — the same window he always sat by, the one with the view of the courtyard that Hirose had once caught him staring out of with that look on his face, that soft, faraway look that used to make Hirose feel strangely warm and uncomfortable at the same time. The kind of look that made Hirose think: he's looking at me, isn't he.
But Nakamura wasn't looking at him now.
He was reading something — a small booklet, stapled at the spine, hand-drawn cover. His expression was unreadable. Not the dramatic, blushing, internally-monologuing Nakamura that Hirose had grown used to. Just... still. Nakamura was simply still.
Hirose watched him for a moment, then looked away.
It's nothing, he told himself. People change.
---
It had started about two weeks after Hana became his girlfriend.
Hirose remembered the exact morning. He'd walked into class and Nakamura had looked up from his desk and said, clearly and without any visible suffering, "Morning, Hirose."
Just that. *Morning, Hirose.* No red ears. No knocking things off desks. No elaborate internal collapse.
Hirose had blinked. "...Morning."
And Nakamura had gone back to his book.
Hirose stood there for three extra seconds feeling, inexplicably, like he had missed something — like he'd looked away during a scene in a movie and when he looked back, the whole plot had shifted and no one was going to explain it to him.
He told himself it didn't matter.
But it kept happening.
Nakamura in the hallway — tall, composed, that dark hair falling across his forehead the way it always did — nodding at Hirose the way you'd nod at a classmate you were perfectly comfortable with. Not flustered. Not urgent. Just... easy.
Nakamura in group discussions, speaking calmly, making a dry observation that made half the class laugh, not looking at Hirose any differently than he looked at anyone else.
Nakamura walking home, once, in the same direction, and Hirose had called out to him — "Hey, Nakamura!" — and Nakamura had slowed down, waited, and walked alongside him for six blocks talking about a documentary he'd seen about deep-sea fish, and it was a perfectly normal conversation, and Hirose couldn't figure out why it left him feeling so unsettled.
---
"You seem different lately," Hirose said one afternoon.
They were at the vending machines. The after-school crowd had thinned. Nakamura pressed the button for his usual coffee drink and caught it with one hand, and turned to look at Hirose with those dark, steady eyes.
"Different how?"
Hirose opened his mouth. Closed it. What was he supposed to say? *You used to look at me like I was the only thing in the room and now you don't and it bothers me and I don't know why it bothers me.*
"I don't know," he said finally. "Just... more relaxed, I guess."
Nakamura considered this. Something passed across his face — not pain exactly, just a flicker of something deep and briefly visible, like a fish turning in dark water. Then it was gone.
"Maybe I just grew up a little," he said, and smiled. It was a real smile. That was the worst part — it was completely real. "Hana seems nice, by the way. You should bring her to the culture festival."
"...Yeah," Hirose said. "Maybe."
Nakamura picked up his bag. "See you tomorrow."
Hirose watched him go.
Grew up, he thought. That's all it was.
He almost believed it.
---
The aquarium was forty minutes from school by train.
Nakamura went on Saturdays, usually in the late afternoon when the elementary school crowds had gone home and the tanks glowed blue and quiet in the dimming light. He always ended up at the same tank. The octopus enclosure. Third one from the left.
Icchan was exactly where he always was, draped over a rock like something half-dreaming.
Nakamura sat on the bench across from the glass and looked at him for a while.
"He walked home with me on Thursday," he said eventually. His voice was very quiet. There was an older couple two tanks over but they weren't paying attention. "Just. Out of nowhere. We talked about fish, actually. You'd have found it relevant."
Icchan moved one arm with great philosophical slowness.
"It's fine," Nakamura said. "It's getting easier. I think." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I don't blush anymore. That's progress, right? I can look at him and just see — a person. A friend. Someone I like being around." He paused. "I just like being around him a lot. Still. That's the part that's — "
He stopped talking.
He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth for a moment, very briefly, the way you do when you're keeping something in.
"It's fine," he said again. "Hana makes him happy. She laughs at all his jokes. She texts him those little stickers he pretends to find embarrassing." He exhaled slowly. "He deserves that. He really does."
Icchan blinked at him with ancient, alien patience.
"I'm not going to do anything about it," Nakamura told him. "I already decided. I'm not going to say anything or make it weird or — or ruin what we have now, because what we have now is actually good, I think. I think we're actually friends. And I would rather have that than — "
His voice cracked. Just slightly. He cleared his throat.
"Than nothing," he finished.
He sat there until the aquarium lights shifted to their evening setting, everything going a deeper, slower blue, and Icchan drifted to the other side of his tank, and Nakamura watched him go with something like recognition.
Yeah, he thought. Me too.
---
Kawamura had made him a manga.
He didn't know when exactly she'd started it — he'd found it in his desk one morning, tucked under his textbook, hand-stapled with a cover that just said, in her small careful lettering: For Okuto.
He'd read it on the train home with his bag on his lap and his face very controlled.
It was about two boys. One dark-haired and quiet. One bright-eyed and unaware. The quiet one spent a lot of the manga standing slightly behind the other one, watching him laugh, watching him reach for things, watching him exist in that careless, golden way some people have of existing. The quiet boy's face in Kawamura's panels was done with very few lines — she drew his expressions mostly through posture, the angle of his head, the way his hands hung at his sides — and somehow that made everything worse.
At the end, the dark-haired boy didn't confess.
He just walked home alone in the last panel, in the rain, and his expression was — it wasn't sad, exactly. It was something quieter than sad. The kind of face you make when you've accepted something and the accepting still costs you something every single day.
Nakamura had closed the manga and held it in both hands for the rest of the train ride.
When he got home, he put it in the drawer of his nightstand.
He lay on his bed for a while looking at the ceiling.
Then he cried. Quietly, the way he did everything now — not the dramatic, gasping, teenage kind of crying, but the low and careful kind, the kind that doesn't make much noise because it's coming from somewhere deeper than noise. He pressed his forearm over his eyes and let it happen because it was better to let it happen at home, alone, where no one could see.
He thought about Hirose's laugh.
He thought about the way Hirose tilted his head when he was confused about something.
He thought about six blocks walking home and deep-sea fish and you seem different lately and the fact that Hirose had noticed, had looked at him and noticed something had changed, and hadn't been able to name it, and for one single terrible second Nakamura had wanted to grab him by the collar and say: it's because I decided to stop. It's because loving you was eating me alive and I chose you as a friend instead because that's what I can have and I will take it, I will take every single ordinary second of it, and you will never know what it cost me.
He didn't say any of that.
He'd said: maybe I just grew up a little.
And smiled.
He was getting very good at that.
---
The next Monday, Kawamura found him before class.
She didn't say anything at first. She just walked up beside him at the shoe lockers and stood there, and Nakamura looked at her sideways, and she looked back at him with those steady eyes behind her glasses.
"You read it," she said.
"Yeah."
"...Was it okay?"
He thought about the last panel. The rain. The boy walking away.
"It was really good," he said honestly. "Your line work on his jacket was — "
"Nakamura."
"I know." He closed his locker. "I know what you're asking."
She reached over and very gently patted him twice on the back. That was all. Just that. Two small pats, like she was acknowledging something that didn't have a name yet.
He stood up straight. Adjusted his bag strap. Looked down the hallway toward the classroom where Hirose was probably already seated, probably already talking to someone, probably already smiling at something.
"Come on," Nakamura said. "We'll be late."
Kawamura fell into step beside him, and neither of them said anything else, and that was enough.
---
It was Matsumura who said it out loud.
They ran into each other near the station — Nakamura coming from the aquarium, Matsumura apparently coming from wherever Matsumura went on weekends, which based on his expression was somewhere deeply self-satisfied.
"Nakamura," he said, with that grin that was specifically calibrated to be irritating. "Fancy seeing you."
Nakamura looked at him. "Matsumura."
"Heard Hirose has a girlfriend now." Matsumura fell into step beside him uninvited, hands in his pockets. "Hana, right? She goes to our old junior high. Sweet girl." He paused for effect. "Guess that means the competition's over, huh."
Nakamura kept walking.
"I mean — not that it was ever really a competition." Matsumura glanced at him sideways. "I've known Hirose for years. We have history. Actual history. You were always kind of a... long shot, weren't you."
Nakamura stopped walking.
Matsumura stopped too, smirking, clearly expecting an argument — the fire, the pushback, the whole Nakamura-declaring-war thing that had become a kind of ritual between them.
Instead, Nakamura turned and looked at him. Calmly. Completely calmly.
"Sure," he said.
Just that. Sure.
And then he kept walking.
Matsumura stood there.
Sure.
Not shut up, Matsumura. Not I haven't given up. Not the flash of wounded pride he'd been banking on. Just — sure. Like it was already decided. Like Nakamura had looked at the board, assessed the game, and quietly put down his pieces.
Something about it made Matsumura's smirk feel cheap.
He caught up to Nakamura in three long strides.
"Hey," he said, and his voice came out less pointed than he intended. "Hey, seriously — "
"I have a train to catch."
"Nakamura." He grabbed his sleeve, briefly, and Nakamura stopped and looked at him with those dark, unhurried eyes, and Matsumura — who had never once in his life not known what to say — found himself staring at this person he'd spent months trying to get a rise out of and thinking: when did you get like this.
"You really just — " He gestured vaguely. "That's it? You're just. Done?"
Nakamura looked at him for a long moment.
"Hirose is happy," he said simply.
Matsumura let go of his sleeve.
Nakamura walked to the train station. Matsumura watched him until he disappeared through the turnstile, and then stood there on the sidewalk for a while with his hands in his pockets and something uncomfortable sitting in his chest.
He thought about texting Hirose.
He didn't know what he would even say.
Hey. Your friend Nakamura. You should look at him sometime. You should really actually look.
---
Hirose did look.
He couldn't stop, actually, now that he'd started. It was like once you noticed the absence of something you couldn't un-notice it — he kept catching himself tracking Nakamura across a room, cataloging small details: the way Nakamura laughed at things without covering his mouth anymore, the easy way he held himself, the fact that he and Kawamura had this quiet comfortable shorthand that Hirose had never noticed before.
"Are you and Kawamura close?" he asked one day, out of nowhere.
Nakamura looked up from his notes. "Yeah, I guess. Why?"
"Just — you seem like you understand each other."
"Mm." Nakamura considered this. "She's easy to talk to."
Hirose looked at his own notes. "What do you talk about?"
A beat. He glanced up and found Nakamura watching him with something he couldn't quite read — something careful and old, like a question that had already been answered a long time ago.
"Stuff," Nakamura said. "Books. Life. Fish." The corner of his mouth turned up. "Nothing important."
Nothing important.
Hirose looked at him.
For one strange, suspended second, he wanted to say — he didn't even know what. Something. Something about how Nakamura used to look at him and how he didn't anymore and how the absence of it had turned into this odd persistent ache, like a tooth that was fine except for when you pressed on it.
"Cool," he said instead.
"Cool," Nakamura agreed, and went back to his notes.
---
On the train home, Nakamura sat by the window and watched the city go dark.
His phone had a text from Kawamura: a small drawing she'd sent as an image, just a doodle — the two manga characters from her story, sitting side by side on a bench, not touching, not looking at each other, just there. Existing in the same space.
Underneath it she'd written: you're doing really well, you know.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then he typed back: thanks for the manga.
And: i look at it sometimes.
And: it helps, weirdly.
Her response was just a small star emoji. Then: you deserve a story that doesn't end in the rain.
He smiled at his phone screen. Then he put it away and looked out the window again.
The city lights blurred past, gold and white, and Nakamura let himself feel it — all of it, the whole complicated weight of caring about someone who was never going to know the full shape of what you felt — and then, slowly, he let out a breath.
The train moved on.
Icchan was probably sleeping now, back at the aquarium, draped over his rock in the blue dark.
It doesn't have to be anything, Nakamura thought. It just has to be bearable.
And most days — most days now — it was.
---
To be continued.
---
— this story does not end in the rain. it ends on a train, going somewhere, which is different.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
PRISON BARS AND BEEF || Κεφάλαιο 0 1
║╬║╬║
The courtyard smelled of sweat, metal, and burnt cigarettes. The sun pressed hard on cracked pavement, and the fences rattled with the faintest breeze. On one side of the yard, inmates clustered around a beaten basketball hoop. On the other, men lounged near the weight benches. And right in the middle—the thick chain-link fence that separated the two wings.
And pressed against it, staring daggers at each other, were Odysseus and Poseidon.
“You planning to burn holes in me with those squinty eyes, old man?” Poseidon grunted, his voice rough like gravel scraped on concrete. He leaned one arm lazily against the fence, tattoos curling up his forearm.
Odysseus smirked, jaw tight. He tugged on his prison-issue shirt, sweat making it cling. “Not my fault your face looks like a target.”
That got a chuckle from the crowd on Odysseus’ side. Men slapped his back, jeering. Across the fence, Poseidon’s side hooted back, egging him on. The beef wasn’t new—hell, everyone in the facility lived for it. Two men who couldn’t pass each other in the lunch line without trading insults.
“Target?” Poseidon sneered, stepping closer. His shadow stretched long through the fence. “Boy, the only target here is you. You strut around like you run things. Don’t forget—you’re still locked in the same cage as the rest of us.”
“I don’t forget,” Odysseus shot back, eyes sharp, “I just don’t accept. That’s the difference between me and you.”
Behind him, Diomedes, his wiry, sharp-faced wingman, leaned in and muttered, “You’re really stirring him up, Ody. Careful before he rips the fence down.”
“I’d pay to see him try,” Odysseus murmured back without breaking his stare.
On Poseidon’s side, Theseus was already trying to keep him calm. “C’mon, man. Don’t waste your blood pressure on this. We got yard time, not a boxing ring.”
But Poseidon wasn’t hearing it. His knuckles flexed against the chain-links, the fence squeaking under the pressure. His eyes bored into Odysseus. “One day, they’re gonna put us in the same block. And when that day comes—”
“You’ll embarrass yourself publicly?” Odysseus cut him off, voice smooth, mocking. “Can’t wait.”
The crowd roared with laughter. Even a guard leaning against the wall couldn’t hide his smirk.
Poseidon’s teeth ground together, but before he could spit another threat, Achilles—always restless, always looking for a fight—stepped up beside Odysseus. His blond hair caught the sun, his fists already itching.
“Tell you what,” Achilles barked through the fence. “How about we speed this up? No need to wait for block transfers. Give me five minutes with him, Ody. Five minutes.” He punched his palm, eyes gleaming.
“No,” Odysseus said flatly, never looking away from Poseidon.
“No?!” Achilles threw his arms up. “You’re wasting gold, Ody. Pure gold!”
Across the way, Ajax—a mountain of a man, broad shoulders filling his shirt—snorted. “If you want gold, Achilles, I’ll spar with you anytime. No need to pick crumbs off Poseidon’s plate.”
“Crumbs?” Achilles snapped, instantly redirected. “You calling me a pigeon, Ajax?!”
And just like that, chaos sparked. Achilles and Ajax started barking at each other while the rest of the inmates cheered like they were ringside. Diomedes facepalmed.
Meanwhile, Odysseus and Poseidon kept their silent duel of stares, as if the noise didn’t exist. It was always like this—no fists, no direct blows. Just simmering hostility that made everyone else’s blood run hotter.
Finally, Poseidon leaned in close enough that his breath almost touched the fence. “You think you’re clever,” he muttered low, almost intimate. “But clever won’t save you forever. Men like me—we endure. Men like you?” He smirked. “You rot.”
Odysseus’ lips twitched. For a moment, something unreadable flickered in his eyes. He stepped forward, lowering his voice to match Poseidon’s. “Maybe. But when I rot, I’ll take you with me.”
The tension snapped like a live wire. Both sides erupted again, louder than before.
║╬║╬║
That evening, back in his block, Odysseus sat on the edge of his bunk. Diomedes paced, restless.
“You know, Ody, I don’t get it,” Diomedes said finally, rubbing his temples. “You never swing first. You never let Achilles go off, even though it’d solve things quick. You just… keep him hanging. Why?”
Odysseus leaned back against the cold wall, expression unreadable. “Because men like Poseidon… they hate waiting. They hate not knowing what comes next. Every insult I throw, every look I give—it eats him from the inside out. And one day, he’ll break on his own. I don’t have to lift a finger.”
Diomedes whistled. “You’re a cruel bastard, you know that?”
“Efficient,” Odysseus corrected softly.
On the other side of the prison, Poseidon sat in his own dim cell, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Theseus was playing cards with another inmate, trying to distract him.
“You really let him crawl under your skin, huh?” Theseus said casually, throwing down a card.
Poseidon’s jaw tightened. He didn’t answer right away. Finally, he muttered, “Man talks like he’s free. Like the bars don’t exist. It’s… infuriating.”
Theseus raised a brow. “Sounds like jealousy.”
Poseidon shot him a glare sharp enough to cut steel. But deep down, he knew it wasn’t entirely wrong.
║╬║╬║
The next day in the courtyard, it all began again. The same fence. The same glares. The same tension that electrified the air like storm clouds gathering.
Odysseus smirked first this time. “Good morning, Poseidon. Sleep well? Or did I keep you up?”
Poseidon clenched his fists, every muscle straining.
The fence rattled. The crowd gathered.
And so it went—day after day, a war fought not with fists, but with patience, wit, and pride.
Neither man willing to back down.
And everyone else? They lived for the show.
να συνεχιστεί...
║╬║╬║
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
THE TASTE OF HOME
(Meneleus x Odysseus)
written by: Han Espiritu
Disclaimer: requested by @lordx-cycles
---
The palace of Menelaus in Sparta had always felt too large, too bright, too polished. The marble gleamed as though scrubbed by gods themselves, the courtyards breathed with roses and fountains. But tonight, it was loud—louder than it had been in years.
Messengers had brought word in advance, and Helen had smiled knowingly, arranging the feast. She claimed it was for her husband’s honor, but everyone in the palace knew who the celebration was for.
The moment Odysseus stepped through the threshold, Menelaus’s heart nearly toppled out of his chest.
“By the gods—look who’s finally remembered where Sparta is!” Menelaus’s voice cracked with laughter, but his hand shook as he gripped the arm of his throne and rose.
Odysseus smirked, carrying the weariness of ten thousand storms in the curve of his mouth. His hair had gone more silver than Menelaus remembered, his skin darkened by endless sun and salt. Yet his eyes—sharp, clever, teasing—were the same as they had been when they had whispered schemes in the dust outside Troy’s walls.
“Don’t tell me you missed me, Menelaus,” Odysseus said, dropping his cloak and spreading his arms. “I’d hate to think the great King of Sparta spent nights pining.”
“You arrogant bastard,” Menelaus muttered, but the words trembled. He took the steps two at a time and threw his arms around him.
The hall erupted in cheers, yet all Menelaus heard was the thunder of Odysseus’s heart against his chest. For a long moment, he didn’t let go.
---
Later, when the feast dwindled and Helen had gracefully excused herself to give them space, the two men sat together at the balcony, the Spartan night air warm and fragrant with jasmine.
Menelaus leaned back, half-drunk on wine and relief. “You’re thinner,” he muttered, nudging Odysseus’s shoulder with his own. “Didn’t Ithaca feed you after all that trouble getting home?”
Odysseus chuckled, swirling his cup. “I’ve had enough to eat. Just… too many years of gnawing on seaweed and despair, I suppose.” He smirked sideways. “Besides, you’re one to talk. Look at you—all golden and polished. Did you marry a goddess or something?”
Menelaus gave a sharp laugh. “Don’t start with that. You’ve seen Helen enough to know she’d take that as truth.”
“Isn’t it?” Odysseus teased, then softened, letting his gaze linger. “But truly… it feels strange, seeing you whole. I think part of me expected you’d vanish, too. Like Agamemnon, like Achilles. Like so many of us.”
Menelaus’s smile faltered. He rested his hand over Odysseus’s, heavy and warm. “Don’t. Don’t you dare put yourself in that list. I waited too long for this, for you. I’m not letting the thought of your ghost rob me tonight.”
Odysseus blinked at the sudden gravity of his words. For a moment, silence stretched between them, filled only by the chorus of cicadas.
“You really did miss me, huh?” Odysseus’s voice was softer now, tinged with something Menelaus couldn’t quite name.
Menelaus squeezed his hand. “Like a limb torn off. Like air I forgot I needed.”
Odysseus tried to deflect with a grin, but it wavered, turning fragile. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the stars. “Do you know how many nights I thought of this?”
“This?”
“This. Sitting with you again. Laughing like we didn’t drown in blood. Pretending we were just… men.” He glanced sideways, eyes shadowed. “It was easier than remembering the things I’d lost. Easier than remembering I might never see you again.”
Menelaus’s throat closed. He reached out without thinking, dragging Odysseus back until their shoulders pressed again.
“Then don’t pretend,” Menelaus whispered. “We are just men tonight. No kings, no wars, no ghosts. Just you and me.”
---
Hours passed. The torches burned low, their laughter rose and fell like tide against stone. They traded stories—Odysseus about the Cyclops, the Sirens, the endless tempests; Menelaus about his wanderings across Egypt, about gods appearing in disguises, about missing companionship even in the company of a queen.
“Gods,” Odysseus groaned, pressing a hand to his face. “I can’t believe you still remember the Cyclops story. Don’t tell me you’ve been mocking me to your soldiers all these years.”
“Mocking? I glorified you!” Menelaus shot back, grinning. “Every feast, I’d recount how clever Odysseus was, how he blinded a giant with nothing but wine and wit.”
“Don’t forget the sharpened stake,” Odysseus muttered.
“Oh, I don’t. I may have exaggerated its size a little.”
Odysseus barked a laugh that made Menelaus’s chest ache with fondness.
When the mirth quieted, Odysseus looked at him, lingering in a way that stretched beyond friendship. “You make it sound like you carried me with you,” he said softly.
“I did.” Menelaus didn’t look away. “Everywhere.”
The words hung between them, heavier than any spear.
Odysseus’s lips parted, then curved into the smallest smile. “Careful, Menelaus. That almost sounded like poetry.”
Menelaus snorted, trying to mask the sudden warmth crawling up his neck. “If it is, it’s your fault. You always did have a way of dragging poetry out of men who swore they had none.”
Odysseus tilted his head, studying him. “And what will you do with me now that I’m here? Keep me? Or send me back to my queen before dawn?”
The teasing tone couldn’t hide the tremor beneath.
Menelaus set his cup down, turning fully to face him. “If I could keep you here, Odysseus, I would. You know that.”
Odysseus stilled, lips parting just slightly, his eyes flickering between Menelaus’s face and the space between them.
The silence was taut, fragile, brimming with things neither had dared to say in twenty years.
And then—Odysseus laughed, soft, almost broken. He leaned his head against Menelaus’s shoulder, his voice a murmur. “Then at least let me stay the night.”
Menelaus froze, then let out a shaky breath, pressing his cheek into Odysseus’s hair. “Stay as long as you want.”
But Odysseus didn’t stop there. Slowly, almost nervously, he lifted his head again, close enough now that Menelaus could see the lines etched into his face by grief, by storms, by time. Close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.
“Menelaus,” Odysseus whispered, the name trembling like a secret.
Menelaus cupped his jaw without thinking, thumb brushing against his beard. “Gods, I thought I’d lost you forever.”
And before doubt could creep in, before reason could claw it back, Menelaus closed the space between them and kissed him.
It was not the kiss of kings, nor of warriors, but of two men who had carried each other in silence for decades. Salt and wine, longing and relief, the taste of home found at last.
Odysseus made a sound—half gasp, half laugh—before his hand slid to Menelaus’s neck, pulling him closer, answering him with a fierceness that felt like coming back from the dead.
When they finally parted, breathless and wide-eyed, Odysseus rested his forehead against his. “Took you long enough,” he whispered, lips curving into a shaky grin.
Menelaus huffed a laugh, his thumb still stroking his cheek. “You always were the patient one.”
“Patient?” Odysseus chuckled, then kissed him again, quick and sure, as if sealing the promise. “I’ve been cursing the gods every night for making me wait this long.”
Menelaus laughed into the kiss, joy spilling from his chest like wine from an overturned cup. And when the dawn finally broke, painting them both in gold, it was not Sparta that felt like home, nor Ithaca.
It was this.
It was him.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
KINGS
(Agamemnon x Odysseus)
written by: Han Espiritu
Disclaimer: requested by @purrfectkiller
___
The hall of Ithaca was quiet that evening, emptied of its usual weight. The hearthfire glowed low, casting a faint orange on the worn stone walls. Outside, the sea whispered against the cliffs, the sound both lullaby and warning. Odysseus sat slouched against a chair, goblet of dark wine in his hand, his hair now more silver than black. He stared at the flames as though they might answer him back.
“Still brooding, I see.”
The voice came like a familiar sting, sharp yet softened by time. Odysseus raised his head slowly. At the doorway stood Agamemnon. The king of Mycenae—or what had once been his kingdom—looked far older than the last Odysseus remembered, but there was still that proud set of the shoulders, that faint, disdainful tilt of his chin, like a man who had never bowed in his life.
“You,” Odysseus muttered, lips twisting into something that was not quite a smile. “I half-thought you’d be too proud to walk into my house.”
Agamemnon stepped in, his sandals heavy on the stone floor. “Pride? I lost that the day my wife’s hand cut me open like an ox.”
A silence lingered, heavy as the sea’s breath. Odysseus set down his goblet. “So the tales are true then. You stand before me, a shade of what you were.”
“Not a shade,” Agamemnon countered, seating himself opposite Odysseus with no invitation. “A lesson. A warning. You’ll learn—if you haven’t already—that kings are slaughtered not by the spears of their enemies, but by the silence of their own homes.”
Odysseus’s jaw tightened, and for a moment, the air between them carried the echoes of Troy, of ships burning and men screaming. “Do not come here to lecture me, old ghost. I’ve endured enough to put even your tragedy to shame.”
Agamemnon smirked, bitter but amused. “And yet, here we sit. Both of us alive—”
“You,” Odysseus cut in, voice sharp, “are not alive. Do not pretend at it.”
That broke something in the stillness. Agamemnon leaned forward, eyes glinting with the edge of memory. “And yet, I feel alive now more than ever. Sitting here, across from you.”
The words caught Odysseus unprepared. His fingers tightened around the stem of the goblet, and for a moment, he didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. He settled for scoffing. “You’ve grown sentimental in death.”
“And you’ve grown softer in age,” Agamemnon replied smoothly. “I can see it—the lines around your mouth, the weight of your bones when you move. Where is the man who matched wits with gods? The trickster who spun lies like golden thread?”
“He grew tired,” Odysseus said plainly. “Tired of the wars, tired of the blood. Tired of watching the people he loves either fade or be taken.” He paused, then added more bitterly, “Even my son—Telemachus—slips from my grasp. Penelope thinks him better in Athens, with Pisistratus.”
Agamemnon leaned back, folding his arms. “Ah. So that’s it. You’re afraid of losing him.”
Odysseus gave a low, humorless laugh. “Afraid? No. It is worse. I know I’ve already lost him. The boy isn’t a boy anymore, and he looks at me as though I am nothing but a shadow on his path.”
Something softened in Agamemnon’s expression, a rare crack in his stony mask. “Neoptolemus rages the same. He cannot stand that Telemachus might belong to another. It seems our children carry the quarrels we once bore.”
Odysseus looked at him sharply. “So it is true, then. Your son—Achilles’ son—covets mine.”
“And yours covets another,” Agamemnon answered, shrugging. “Perhaps the gods laugh at us still, binding our bloodlines in tangled knots we cannot undo.”
For a long moment, neither spoke. The fire hissed. Outside, the waves rose higher, slapping harder against the cliffs. Finally, Odysseus poured another goblet of wine and pushed it across the table.
Agamemnon accepted it, their fingers brushing briefly on the cup. That single touch stirred something unspoken between them, an old memory, not of war but of quiet moments—conversations shared in tents during Troy’s endless nights, where strategy melted into weary laughter, and laughter into something dangerously close to tenderness.
“You remember, don’t you?” Agamemnon asked, his voice lower now, almost fragile.
Odysseus didn’t answer at once. He stared into his drink, watching the wine ripple with the movement of his hand. At last, he said, “I remember you were insufferable. Always demanding, always cruel in the name of order. Yet when the night grew deep, and the wine heavy, you were—” He stopped himself.
Agamemnon’s lips curved faintly. “Say it.”
“Human,” Odysseus finished, his voice a whisper. “You were human, and I almost pitied you for it.”
The laugh that escaped Agamemnon was hoarse, but real. “And you? You were maddening. Always slipping from my grasp, even when you sat right beside me. Trickster, liar, lover of no one but your own cleverness. Yet—” He paused deliberately, leaning closer. “—I wanted you. Gods help me, I wanted you then as I want you now.”
Odysseus’s breath caught. The years between them—two decades of blood, exile, betrayal—seemed to vanish in that instant, leaving only the raw, unfinished thing they had once left unspoken.
“You speak like a man who’s forgotten the wife that killed him,” Odysseus muttered, though his voice lacked bite.
“And you speak like a man who’s afraid of the truth,” Agamemnon countered. “Penelope may be yours in the eyes of Ithaca, but tell me, Odysseus—did she ever know the fire that burned in you when you planned with me? Did she ever see the hunger in your eyes when you spoke of glory, of cunning, of conquest? Or was that reserved only for me?”
Odysseus pushed back his chair sharply, rising to his feet. “Enough. You speak madness.”
“Madness?” Agamemnon rose too, stepping closer until they were only breaths apart. “No, Odysseus. Not madness. Memory.”
The air between them was thick, suffocating, but neither moved away. Odysseus’s fists clenched at his sides, his chest rising and falling fast. Agamemnon’s eyes held his with the same force he had once used to command armies.
Finally, Odysseus broke. His hand shot forward, gripping Agamemnon’s cloak, pulling him close. Their foreheads touched—harsh, desperate, yet trembling with something neither dared name.
“I should hate you,” Odysseus whispered. “I should cast you out of this house, ghost or no. You’ve cost me too much.”
“And yet,” Agamemnon murmured, “you hold me still.”
For a long time, they remained there, pressed together not as kings, not as warriors, but as two men undone by the years and the wars that bound them.
When Odysseus finally released him, the weight of the moment lingered. Agamemnon stepped back, his smirk returning, though softer this time.
“We will always bicker, like an old married pair,” he said. “But admit it, Odysseus—you would not have it any other way.”
Odysseus exhaled, half-laughing despite himself. “By the gods, you’re intolerable.”
“Then drink with me,” Agamemnon said, lifting his goblet. “One last time, as we did in Troy.”
Odysseus hesitated, then raised his own cup. Their eyes met, and for once, neither spoke. The silence said enough.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
Hey you guys, gals, non-binary pals. Anything you wanna request for me to write? I just went back to college.....and the feeling of overworking myself is creeping into me again. And so give out ideas or simple suggestions, that would be nice. 🫶🏼
I SAID NIGHTMARE NOT FANTASY
(Diomedes x Odysseus)
written by: HanEspiritu
---
The moon was silver and distant. Aeaea’s night was warm, but the air inside the palace crackled cold.
“You are insufferable,” Circe snapped, slamming a clay jar on the marble table so hard it cracked. “You eat my figs, sleep in my bed, piss in my gardens, and all you do is moan.”
Odysseus leaned against a pillar, robes undone, eyes storm-dark with that smug weariness he’d perfected over twenty years of surviving gods, war, and his own hubris. “I moan because I’m trapped. This isn’t a palace, Circe, it’s a gilded prison.”
“You came here willingly.”
“And I’m regretting it with every cursed sunrise.”
Circe laughed—a sound like glass shattering. “Poor Ithacan king. You want a ship? A crew? Your little wife with her little loom?”
Odysseus’ jaw clenched. “At least she’s not flinging spells because she can’t handle a conversation.”
“Oh, please. Don’t project your cowardice onto me.”
“I’m not a coward.”
“No, just a man who can’t admit what keeps him up at night.”
That hit a nerve.
Circe watched him. Eyes narrowing. “You toss and groan like you’re still on the battlefield, but it’s not blood or blades that wake you in sweat, is it?”
“Drop it,” he muttered.
She took a step forward. “Tell me, Odysseus, who do you see in those dreams you won’t speak of? Achilles? Hector? Or maybe—” she grinned, cruel and sharp, “Diomedes.”
He flinched. A tiny tic, almost nothing. But Circe saw it.
“Oh,” she whispered. “There it is.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snapped.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “You’ve been choking on his name since you arrived.”
Odysseus turned away. His breath was shallow.
Circe’s voice dropped, low and laced with venom. “You think you’re so clever, hiding it beneath riddles and storms. But I’ve watched you wake up hard and aching, whimpering like a man undone. You’re not haunted by war. You’re haunted by him.”
His silence was answer enough.
“I should turn you into a dog,” she hissed. “But no. You don’t deserve to be anything with that kind of loyalty.”
She raised her hand, fingers glowing with the dark shimmer of deep-rooted magic. Her voice was a tongue older than time, twisting the air into knots around him.
“Let your worst dream swallow you whole,” she whispered. “Let your secrets fuck you to pieces.”
A flash of heat. A pulse of shadow.
And Odysseus collapsed into sleep.
---
He opened his eyes and the world was gold. Dripping honey and wine and smoke. Pillars of ivory rose around him. Silken sheets pooled beneath his body. He was naked, flushed, confused.
A hand touched his ankle.
He sat up—
Diomedes stood before him. Towering. Sun-bronzed skin, scars like rivers down his chest. His eyes were molten, dangerous. Exactly as he had been in Troy—smeared in blood, mouth full of orders, impossible to ignore.
But there was another behind him.
Identical. Except this one smiled more. A shade darker, lips quirked with knowing hunger. They moved in tandem—step forward, step closer.
Odysseus’s heart hammered.
“Is this—” he whispered, voice gone thin. “This isn’t real.”
“You’ve imagined it often enough,” said one Diomedes.
“We just thought we’d make it easier,” said the other.
They knelt, each on one side of him, hands dragging over his thighs. He gasped. Their touch was heavy, claiming, practiced. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like judgment.
“You don’t speak of us,” murmured the first. “But you think of us.”
“And not just me,” said the second, breath hot against his throat. “You think of both.”
“I didn’t—this isn’t—” Odysseus tried to pull back, but there was nowhere to go.
“You wanted to be taken,” they said together, as their hands pressed him flat on his back.
Two mouths against his skin. One at his throat, one on his stomach. Fingers tracing down, circling places no one had touched in years.
“You think you can take it?” the first Diomedes whispered against his ear. “You want both of us to fill you?”
“You’re not real,” Odysseus choked out. “Circe—this is her curse—”
“No,” the other one growled, positioning himself between Odysseus’ legs. “This is your desire.”
Odysseus cried out, overwhelmed—breathless as their hands held him wide, their bodies pressing in from either side, thick and heavy and so much. The stretch, the fullness, the impossibility of it all made his back arch, his eyes roll.
And gods, he wanted it.
One thrust forward, the other pressed behind, and he was sandwiched in a tide of muscle, heat, and unrelenting motion. He could feel every inch, every pulse, every breath against his skin.
“I can’t—” he whimpered.
“Yes you can,” they growled.
He came undone.
Stars exploded behind his eyes. He screamed their name, over and over, one after the other until even in dream it echoed like a curse—and a prayer.
---
Morning
Odysseus jolted awake.
Soaked in sweat. Trembling. Seed sticky on his stomach. He stared at the ceiling, dazed and shaking.
“Gods,” he whispered. “What have I done?”
The door creaked open.
Circe stood there, robe dragging on the floor, arms crossed, a single eyebrow raised.
“You screamed,” she said dryly. “Three times.”
Odysseus said nothing.
“Must’ve been terrifying,” she added, tone dripping sarcasm. “Want to tell me what happened? No? Fine. I’ll guess.”
She walked over, bent down, and flicked the sheet off his hips.
Her lips twitched into a wicked smile. “That doesn’t look like fear, Odysseus.”
He flung the sheet back, face burning. “It was—intense.”
“Tell me,” she said, leaning over him, voice like silk and poison. “Was he big? No—wait. Let me guess. There were two of him.”
He stared at her.
“Oh, my gods,” she whispered. “There were two. You dreamed a whole second Diomedes? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I didn’t ask for that!” he snapped. “You cursed me!”
Circe cackled. Actually cackled. “I said worst nightmare, not most deranged fantasy.”
Odysseus buried his face in his hands.
“Worried it won’t feel the same without both of them?” she teased.
“I hate you.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she purred, turning toward the door. “You just hate how much you liked it.”
She vanished in a swirl of perfume and laughter, leaving Odysseus to stare at the ceiling.
Alone. Sticky. And absolutely, utterly ruined.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
WHAT THE SEA COULDN'T DROWN
(Diomedes x Odysseus)
written by: HanEspiritu
------
The waves were quiet that night.
Ithaca slept under a crescent moon, silver on stone and wood and the salt-damp skin of the man who’d just come home. Odysseus stood barefoot on the beach, a cloak around his shoulders, watching the tide touch the shore like it, too, remembered him.
Behind him, Diomedes watched.
He’d arrived that morning. No fanfare, no trumpet. Just the word spreading like a hush: Odysseus has returned. Penelope was gone—left months ago. Telemachus was away. The hall was cold.
So Diomedes came. He didn’t know what he expected. He just knew he had to see him.
He stepped forward now, boots quiet on the sand.
Odysseus didn’t turn. He didn’t need to.
“You came,” he said, voice like worn velvet.
“I didn’t think you’d still be standing,” Diomedes replied softly.
“I’ve stood for twenty years,” Odysseus murmured. “I didn’t know how to stop.”
Silence fell between them like mist. Then Diomedes reached out—just a fingertip, brushing the bare skin at Odysseus’s wrist.
Odysseus’s breath caught.
“You’re shaking,” Diomedes said.
“The wind,” Odysseus lied.
But it wasn’t the wind.
It was him.
---
They stood in the hall like ghosts of themselves—Diomedes in his travel cloak, damp and wrinkled; Odysseus in nothing but that sea-worn wrap, chest half-bared, hair still tangled from the wind.
Neither moved to light a fire. The moonlight was enough.
“Say something,” Odysseus murmured. “Anything.”
Diomedes exhaled, low. “I never stopped wanting you.”
The words landed like a spear.
Odysseus turned slowly, his expression unreadable, mouth parted just slightly. “Even now?”
“Especially now.” Diomedes stepped forward, a hand rising, hesitant—but Odysseus leaned into it, his cheek catching the calloused warmth of fingers he’d dreamed about on lonely islands.
“I thought about you,” Odysseus confessed, voice nearly a whisper. “On Calypso’s island. With Circe. Even when I was with them, I thought about you.”
Diomedes closed his eyes. “Gods…”
“I hated it,” Odysseus went on. “Wanting you like that. Needing it. Like hunger that never went away.”
“You could have sent for me.”
“I was ashamed.”
Diomedes opened his eyes, voice rough. “Of loving me?”
“Of loving at all.”
The word hung between them—raw, trembling.
And then Diomedes surged forward.
---
The kiss was fire and water.
Not a battle—a surrender. A slow, molten ache uncoiling from twenty years of silence. Diomedes’ hands found Odysseus’s waist, dragging him close, palms mapping the body that had haunted him since Ilium—older now, yes, but strong, solid, alive.
Odysseus moaned softly into his mouth, fingers clutching the front of Diomedes’s cloak, then slipping beneath it, dragging it off.
They broke apart only to breathe—foreheads pressed, lips swollen, gasping like men drowning in each other.
“You’re real,” Diomedes said, voice shaking. “Gods, I can feel you.”
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” Odysseus whispered. “But I didn’t know if you'd still want me.”
Diomedes’s mouth found his throat, kissing the salt and skin. “I wanted you. Not the legend.”
---
They found the bed by instinct—stumbling, laughing once through their teeth, mouths meeting again, urgent and slow, slow, slow. There was no rush now. Only the long-awaited indulgence of touch.
Odysseus lay back, letting Diomedes climb over him, every line of their bodies fitting like the end of a prophecy.
Diomedes kissed every scar.
Odysseus gasped with every one.
“You still make that sound,” Diomedes said against his stomach, lips brushing old battle-wounds. “Gods, I remember it.”
Odysseus pulled him up, pressed their foreheads together. “Then remind me. Of all of it.”
Clothes slid away. Skin met skin. And nothing was hurried.
It was not just lust—it was worship. Every kiss placed like a prayer. Every breath like a benediction.
Diomedes moved over him with reverence. Odysseus arched into him like surrender. Their hands threaded together above the sheets, chests pressed, mouths open.
When Odysseus gasped his name—not like a warrior, but like a man undone—Diomedes bent to kiss it from his lips.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “This time, I’m not letting go.”
---
Afterward, they lay tangled in the warm dark, the storm finally passed.
Odysseus rested his head on Diomedes's shoulder, fingertips drawing idle shapes across his chest.
“I thought the sea would take me,” he said softly. “But it didn’t.”
“No,” Diomedes murmured. “It just brought you to me.”
They were quiet for a time.
Then: “Stay.”
Odysseus looked up.
Diomedes didn’t smile, but his voice held the weight of everything they never got to say at Troy.
“Stay,” he repeated. “Not for the gods. Not for a throne. Just… for me.”
Odysseus leaned in, pressing a kiss to the curve of Diomedes’s throat.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered.
And for the first time in twenty years, he meant it.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
SLIP OF THE IMMORTAL TONGUE
(Hermes x Telemachus)
written by: Han Espiritu
---
The olive trees whispered with the winds of Ithaca as dusk fell, gold spilling over marble and stone like the last touch of a god's hand. In the quiet grove just beyond the palace, Telemachus stood alone, wrapping the leather straps of his bracers tighter around his arms. His sword lay across a flat rock, glinting cold beneath the orange sun.
His chest was heavy with resolve—but not peace.
“You’re truly going,” came a voice behind him. Light-footed, almost a sigh in the wind.
Telemachus didn’t need to turn. The slight shimmer in the air had already given the presence away. The scent of cypress and citrus always came with him—Hermes, god of wayfarers, liars, and the ever-watching wind.
“Yes,” Telemachus answered softly, his eyes still cast to the sky. “Neoptolemus leads the fleet at dawn. I will be on one of those ships.”
There was a long pause. Hermes stepped closer, his sandals silent on the grass. “You don’t need to go to this war.”
“I do.” Telemachus finally turned to face him, his jaw set. “I am the son of Odysseus. I won’t be remembered for just staying behind. Ithaca is not a nest to cower in.”
“Ithaca needs you,” Hermes argued, frustration tightening in his voice. “The gods need you. I need—”
He cut himself off. His golden eyes flicked away, a storm flashing behind them.
Telemachus stepped forward, eyebrows knitting in concern. “Say it.”
Hermes’ voice cracked, a whisper barely rising above the breeze. “You don’t understand what you’re walking into, Telemachus. You think it’s glory and proving yourself, but war… war breaks you. Piece by piece. I've seen it happen. Again and again.”
“I’m not afraid of dying.”
“It’s not your death I fear!” Hermes shouted suddenly, his voice slicing through the grove. Birds startled and scattered from the trees.
Telemachus flinched at the rawness in the god’s tone.
Hermes stepped back, trembling, fists clenched. His breath came hard, his shoulders tense like a string pulled taut for centuries.
“I’ve lost too much,” he said, softer now. “I watched too many mortals walk into the fire thinking they were gods.”
“And yet you walk among us, still.” Telemachus tilted his head, searching Hermes’ eyes. “Why? Why stay?”
Hermes looked at him. Really looked at him.
And in that instant, the words came unbidden, trembling from somewhere deep and haunted.
“Because I loved one of you.”
Telemachus froze.
Hermes stepped closer, his voice falling to a whisper that trembled with something ancient and raw. “His name was Crocus. He was… spirited. Soft-hearted, reckless. Like you.”
The name rang out like a bell.
“I warned him not to join the Sicilian campaign,” Hermes continued. “Begged him not to sail with the tyrants. But he wanted glory. To be more than a shepherd’s son.” His hands shook as he spoke. “They sent his head back in a basket. His mother threw herself into the sea.”
The god’s breath hitched. “And now you stand here, trying to be brave, and I see it happening again.”
Telemachus reached out slowly, gently placing a hand on Hermes’ arm.
“I’m not him,” he said quietly.
Hermes looked down at the touch—and suddenly his voice broke, jagged and hoarse, "CROCUS—!”
Silence.
Telemachus blinked.
Hermes stood frozen, eyes wide, his mouth trembling as if he could shove the word back in time.
But it had already been spoken.
The name lingered in the grove like a ghost, heavy and sacred.
Telemachus let his hand fall.
“Oh,” he said softly.
“I didn’t mean—” Hermes gasped. “I wasn’t thinking. It slipped. I—”
“You called me his name.” Telemachus looked down, his voice steady but distant. “I see.”
“No. No, Telemachus—listen—” Hermes took a desperate step toward him, fingers reaching. “You’re not him. You are you. And I—gods—I care for you.”
“Do you?” Telemachus asked, voice edged with a bitter laugh. “Or am I just another boy with a sword and a death wish? Someone to follow in his shadow so you can rewrite a tragedy?”
Hermes faltered. “It’s not like that.”
“You’re not mortal. You don’t understand what it is to have to make something of yourself. We die. That’s the difference. We only get one chance.”
The wind around them picked up as Hermes’ aura sparked and flickered with emotion, uncontrollable even for a god.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered, more broken than divine.
“You haven’t lost me yet,” Telemachus replied. “But you need to decide if you’re seeing me, or if I’m just Crocus in your eyes.”
Hermes looked at him with anguish, lips parted but no words coming out.
The silence stretched.
Then, slowly, Hermes dropped to his knees before the mortal boy—no, man—who stood before him. In all his immortal millennia, few had made a god kneel.
“I see you, Telemachus. It terrifies me. And I—I’m sorry for the name. But I won’t lie. My heart still aches for him.”
Telemachus stared down at him, silent. His expression unreadable. For a long while, he said nothing.
Then, he knelt too.
They sat, knee to knee, both caught in the fading twilight.
“Tell me about him,” Telemachus said.
Hermes looked up, stunned. “What?”
“Tell me what made you love him. Not how he died. How he lived.”
Hermes’ eyes softened. For the first time that evening, the pain in his face gave way to something gentler.
“He danced barefoot in fields even when they were muddy,” he said, a wistful smile curling his lips. “He cursed the stars when it rained. He wrote poetry and always forgot where he hid it.”
Telemachus listened, his heart strangely calm.
As the night deepened and the stars blinked open overhead, they sat together, one mortal, one god—grieving, healing, remembering.
And when the time came, Hermes didn’t stop him from sailing at dawn.
But he did place a hand on Telemachus’ chest before he left.
Not to bind him.
But to bless him.
And that night, as Telemachus stepped aboard the ship, he looked back only once—to where the god still stood on the cliff, cloak billowing, hand over his heart.
And for the first time, Telemachus understood what it was to be loved by a god.
Not as a memory.
But as himself.
---
⚠️ Plagiarism Warning:
This work is original and written by HAN ESPIRITU. Do not copy, repost, or translate without permission. Plagiarizing or claiming this story as your own is strictly prohibited and will be reported.
TIDES BETWEEN US
(Epic the Musical x Percy Jackson Crossover)
written by: Han Espiritu
Note: I deeply apologize for my long absence, I've been really into Minecraft lately HAHAHAHA also I got bored and wrote this piece, tell me if anyone of you likes these type of story idea.
---
The clash of gods was not something Percy Jackson ever got used to, even as the son of one.
But this fight… this was personal.
Saltwater thundered across the battlefield, crashing against columns and shields, pulling marble statues into the sea like toys. Poseidon—not his Poseidon—roared as he struck down at Odysseus, trident shimmering with godly wrath. The king of Ithaca dodged narrowly, blood dripping from a cut above his brow, his own voice shouting something defiant, but tired.
“You blinded my son!” the sea god bellowed. “You mocked me. You took my favor and spat in it!”
Odysseus raised his sword. “You cursed me! You hunted me! I did what I had to, for my men—”
“My son.”
The word shook Percy more than it should’ve. This version of Poseidon was unrecognizable. Not just in appearance—shorter beard, more regal robes, darker eyes—but in how passionately he mourned Polyphemus. In Percy’s world, Poseidon barely mentioned the cyclops. Here, the god of the sea wept for him.
And Percy? He’d fallen through a rift, a watery portal opened by some divine mess-up, and found himself trapped in this version of the Odyssey—a sung world, dramatic and sharper, like music burned into reality.
When the fight ended—Odysseus wounded but not slain, Poseidon retreating to let mortals suffer further—Percy ran. He couldn’t risk being seen. Not yet.
---
Three days passed.
He stayed on the edge of Ithaca’s palace grounds, dressed in a borrowed cloak and sandals, blending in with traders and scribes. He knew this story. He’d read it. He’d lived its echoes. But being here felt surreal. The air tasted like old myths and fresh olives.
By the fourth day, Percy wandered into the outer courtyard.
A young man stood alone, sword resting in one hand, a clay cup in the other. He was sun-kissed and lean, with a tunic falling gently around his shoulders. There was a beauty mark beneath his lower lip, the kind that seemed placed by Aphrodite herself, and a tired grace in the way he exhaled.
Prince Telemachus.
Percy froze.
The man turned. “You’re the one who visits but doesn’t speak.”
“…What?”
“I’ve seen you. Hiding behind columns. Watching the coast.”
Percy shifted awkwardly. “I like the view.”
Telemachus smirked faintly. “Don’t we all?”
There was a pause. The kind that suggested the gods were watching closely, fingers poised on harp strings.
“I’m Telemachus,” he added, extending a hand.
“…Percy.” He took it. His palm was warm and calloused. A fighter’s hand, despite his calm demeanor.
“Strange name,” the prince said. “You’re not from here.”
“Not exactly,” Percy admitted, pulling the cloak tighter. “I’m… far from home.”
Telemachus stared for a beat. “You have the eyes of a man who has lost cities.”
That hit too close.
“You don’t talk like a courtier,” he added. “Or a soldier.”
“I’m not.”
“And yet, you carry grief like armor.”
Percy looked away. “And you sound like someone who reads too many epics.”
Telemachus laughed—light, almost musical. “Maybe. My father was one, after all. Every bard tells me so.”
The mention of Odysseus cast a shadow over the sun.
Percy braced himself.
“You don’t like him, do you?” Telemachus asked softly, voice suddenly more personal.
“I don’t know him,” Percy said carefully. “Not this version.”
“That’s honest. Most pretend. They praise his victories, but I lived with his absences.”
Telemachus walked a few steps away, sipping from his cup, gaze distant.
“He came home, eventually,” he continued. “After years. After monsters and witches and storms. But he never really came back to me. Only to the idea of home.”
Percy stepped closer. “And what are you, if not home?”
Telemachus turned sharply. He hadn’t expected that.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I’ve tried to be Ithaca’s son, Penelope’s hope. But even now, I’m a silhouette beside him.”
Percy’s heart clenched. “I know that feeling.”
Telemachus looked at him.
“You do?”
Percy exhaled slowly. “My father’s Poseidon. But... not yours.”
Telemachus’s eyes widened, but he didn’t step back. He just looked.
“You mean you’re…”
“From a different world. Timeline. Whatever you wanna call it. Where gods don’t mourn cyclopes. Where the sea doesn’t rage for revenge. And where sons wait for their fathers just the same.”
Telemachus was quiet. Then: “Are you a god?”
Percy scoffed. “Gods suck. I’m just their problem.”
A pause. Then, surprisingly, Telemachus smiled.
“I like you.”
Percy blinked. “What?”
“You’re strange. Honest. And you wear your pain like I do—awkwardly.”
The two laughed. Then they sat on the stone ledge of the courtyard. The sea hummed below.
“You know the songs,” Telemachus said after a while. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know how it ends?”
Percy nodded slowly. “I think I do.”
Telemachus looked up. “Tell me.”
Percy hesitated. “It’s not my place.”
“But you’ve walked between the lines of my life. That gives you more place than most.”
And so, Percy told him.
About the songs. The legacy. The suitors. The long years. How Odysseus would vanish again. How Telemachus would fade into footnotes, remembered only as the boy who waited.
“I don’t want to be a footnote,” Telemachus whispered. “I want to matter.”
“You do.”
Telemachus looked at him. “Will you remember me?”
Percy reached out, gently tucking a strand of hair behind the prince’s ear.
“I already do.”
For a moment, the air shifted. Like the gods paused their games. A hand lingered on a cheekbone, and in another life, maybe that was enough.
But the sea called Percy home.
He stood. “The rift’s reopening. I can feel it.”
Telemachus rose too. His voice was steady, but his fingers trembled.
“Then go. But remember—when the sea crashes hardest, think of me.”
“I will.”
Percy pressed something into Telemachus’s hand: a small, blue seashell from his world. A token. A memory.
Telemachus stared down at it like it was a gift from Olympus itself.
“Goodbye, Percy Jackson.”
“Goodbye, Prince of Ithaca.”
And with that, Percy walked back to the edge of myth, where sea and time collided, and disappeared beneath a new wave.
The story continued. But now, it carried a ripple.
One that remembered.
---
To be continued?